I’d like to thank all of our loyal readers and writers for sticking with us as the site has gone through a slightly inactive period. Being an avid reader of PTB for some time, when the opportunity arose to revitalize the blog, it was with great pleasure that I accepted the position of Editorial Director. PickTheBrain.com is one of the highest quality, most respected Self-Improvement sites on the web, due in equal parts to it’s valuable, practical and inspiring content and the incredible community of users that continue to support it so enthusiastically!

Now more than ever, in these chaotic, uncertain and challenging times, it is both difficult and important to stay focused and motivated. There definitely are opportunities out there to turn the corner and reignite your path to success (yes, I’m a glass half-full girl!); they’re just a little harder to find. My commitment to you is to continue to make Pick The Brain a trusted resource to help you discover the best ways to lead an ever-more productive, fulfilled and motivated life!

Starting NOW, I will be publishing new articles from some of your favorite, as well as new writers on an almost daily basis, and we’ll soon be reaching out to our readers on Twitter, Facebook and in other outlets (you can start following us on twitter.com/pickthebrain). Your comments and suggestions are always welcome and encouraged. Please feel free to email me directly at erin@pickthebrain.com with topics you would like to see covered…or anything else on your mind.

Be well and happy achieving!

Erin

Have you ever entered a chatroom and found yourself sharing things (that you could never discuss face to face) with a bunch of strangers? Have you ever poured your soul out on your blog, writing about your deepest fears, most powerful dreams, or secret shames? Have you ever stayed up long into the night, chatting to people online – without even knowing their real names, ages, genders or anything about them?

You’re in good company; most other internet users have done the same. Online space acts as a disinhibitor; like alcohol, it encourages us to be more sociable and less wary than we would be normally.

“Cyberspace is a disinhibitor. … People from many cultures find that online they are more open, more chatty, less reticent than they are face-to-face or even on the telephone.” - Kate Fox, Watching the English (book), pg 226

If you’re a shy, reserved person, but find yourself opening up to the world online, this explains why. It can be a huge delight – but also a danger. Here’s how to make sure you avoid the problems that can arise from the lack of inhibitions you feel online – and how to make the most of it instead.

The Dangers of Disinhibition

Because cyberspace can seem unreal, separated from everyday life, it’s unfortunately all too easy to do things that you might later regret. Online communication may seem ephemeral, but emails, messenger conversations, blog and twitter posts can all be recorded – and easily shared.

With People You Already Know

When you find yourself sharing details with your colleagues by email that you’d not want to discuss at the water cooler, it’s time to stop and think before you hit “send”. It’s easy to disclose a bit too much in an email – and you may risk serious damage to your reputation if you speak your mind too freely. People have lost their jobs by sending inappropriate emails.

“We can all remember incidents of embarrassing e-mails that had been sent to one person and ended up going halfway around the world and being splashed across the newspapers. A study by Employment Review found that most organizations had to take action when employees sent inappropriate e-mails (76 per cent) or accessed inappropriate e-mails (68 per cent).” - How the Internet Can Get You Sacked

If your managers and boss are your “friends” on Facebook, you can’t be too over-cautious when you leave messages on their wall, or even when you update your own status. Mentioning your hangover and your illicit “duvet day” is probably not such a good idea…

“The actions of a call centre employee who was caught on Facebook bragging about “chucking a sickie” will be the subject of an internal investigation, after the scandal was revealed in the Daily Telegraph Online.” – Probe over call centre man’s Facebook sickie blooper

Be careful, too, about conversations with platonic friends. It’s easy for online chat to become flirty and silly; this can be harmless fun, but if you’re in a relationship already, steer well clear. Cyber-sex, or just cyber chat-up lines, might seem like no big deal, but it could be a devastating betrayal to your partner if s/he finds out.

With Strangers

Although you’re unlikely to risk losing your job or partner by getting overly familiar with strangers, you still need to be cautious. It’s easy to feel close to people very quickly online, especially if you meet through some shared interest (forums for your favorite webcomic, an online game, a blog, etc).

Be wary of forming attachments too quickly. People come and go a lot online, and someone who you chatted to every day for weeks may just vanish – they’ve lost interest in the forum you’re on, they’re busy in real life, they’ve taken up a new hobby. They may even have lied about their gender, age, job, marital status, or other details.

“A new study by researchers at Cornell University to be published in Proceedings of Computer/Human Interaction has found that online daters usually lie about either their height or weight but less often misrepresent their age. Men systematically overestimated their height, while women more commonly underestimated their weight.” - Lying for Love Online

You often can’t trust what people tell you online. Here’s a not-so-pleasant scenario: you strike up a friendship with someone who says she’s a single mum with two kids, trying to get back into education. You chat for a few days, she shares her goals and dreams with you, and you offer what advice you can. Then she asks, hesitantly, whether you might be able to lend her some money … she tells you she hates having to even ask, but she’s desperate. She can barely put food on the table.

Now, you might well be skeptical about her claims, but a lot of people would be taken in. I’m certainly not suggesting that you don’t form friendships online, and my rule of thumb is to simply take people at face value – but do be a little cautious about people preying on your good nature.

The Delights of Disinhibition

After all the gloomy scenarios above, you might want to become an internet lurker, reading forums and blogs, but never interacting with anyone. There are, though, lots of advantages to feeling a lack of inhibitions. If you’re shy, the internet may be a place where you feel free to “be yourself” for the first time.

With People You Already Know

In my last job, when the small group of us in my team decided to use Twitter, I felt like I knew more about my colleagues than I’d learned in months. We did have msn for internal communication, but Twitter had a different effect: people would write about how they were feeling and what they were thinking about. It was a fun way to stay in touch with what mattered in my colleagues’ lives (and to realize that I wasn’t the only one who probably had things other than work on my mind, most of the time…)

“Immediate, real-time feedback from others tends to have a very powerful effect on the ongoing flow of how much people reveal about themselves. In e-mail and message boards, where there are delays in that feedback, people’s train of thought may progress more steadily and quickly towards deeper expressions of what they are thinking and feeling.”- Psychology of Cyberspace – The Online Disinhibition Effect

You might find that you’re able to put thoughts into an email that you’d struggle to say face-to-face. An email doesn’t seem nearly so formal as a letter, so could be an ideal way to communicate with a difficult friend – perhaps someone who you struggle to talk openly with because of his/her anger or confrontational personality.

Reading people’s blogs can be a huge insight into what matters to them. I’m always fascinated by reading family members’ writings: you might realize you have more in common with a sibling or cousin than you previously thought. It’s odd but true that sometimes we find it easier to share our deepest hopes and secret dreams with strangers rather than family.

With Strangers

So, what about those online strangers? There are millions of internet users out there who you don’t know – and feeling less inhibited online can help you to make connections. Friendships can blossom quickly over the internet: just a few emails back and forth is often enough to start off a strong bond.

Many of us introverts find it difficult to go up to people at a party, or in a coffee shop or bar and start a conversation. The online world can make things much easier; commenting on a blog or posting on Twitter isn’t nearly so scary as greeting a complete stranger in public.

“Just as we abandon the conventional rules of spelling and grammar in our emails and other cyber-talk, so we ignore the social inhibitions and restrictions that normally govern our behaviour.” - Kate Fox, Watching the English (book), pg 226

The internet can be a huge help if you live in an isolated situation – whether geographically, or by nature of the people around you (i.e. if you feel you don’t have anyone to discuss “things that matter” with). However outlandish your interests, there’ll be websites, forums, blogs and chatrooms devoted to them: the internet is a great way to find likeminded people.

A few guidelines

In summing up, I’d like to offer a few guidelines to using the internet disinhibition effect to your advantage, rather than letting it cause problems for you.

• Be very cautious about putting confidential or personal “real life” details in round-robin emails. (You don’t need to tell your entire company about that amazing girl/guy you pulled last night.)

• If you’re in a relationship, avoid “flirty” online conversations full-stop. It might seem completely harmless, but it’s not: it’s very easy to take things further than you mean to, and many people log messenger conversations.

• Connect with “real-life” friends online, and use the internet to stay in casual contact with them. You might find out that they have goals and dreams that are in alignment with your own.

• Look for websites, forums and other “places” online where people with the same interests as you gather. Even if no-one in your small home town shares your passion for obscure comic books, there’ll be plenty of people on the internet who do.

Have you ever run into dangers – or delights – because of the online disinhibition effect? It would be great to hear some of your experiences in the comments!

Written by Ali, who runs the blog Alpha Student: helping students get the most out of university.

And yes, there was a time before we had the “tubes” of the internet. And before social media. But you can put all those years of inefficiency and dismay behind you, because that time has passed.

So you are probably wondering how does social media improve my life? Here are just a few benefits:

1. Say Connected

At a recent conference, Cultural Anthropologist Grant McCracken pointed out that Facebook means your contacts are always warm. You’re always in touch with them in a subtle yet meaningful way. “This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.”

While you may not have seen that co-worker from a few years back, your newsfeed tells you what she’s been up to. Or you read that your friend is planning a trip to Boston so you decide to send her the email address for that couple you know who also enjoys Melanesian Throat Singing. And your Facebook status can inform business contacts that you’re “excited about the new job” – which subtly clues them in to the fact that you have changed workplaces – without any drama. And as Chris Brogan puts it, social networks can be as connective as a local pub.

2. Be More Productive

Or at least save some valuable time. Rather than sifting through mounds of paper or your desktop favourites, social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia make finding and storing articles, posts, sites and videos easy and fluid.

3. Show off your assets (no not those, put those away!)

You have talent, so flaunt it! Youtube let’s you show the world your abilities (and sometimes lack thereof), while Strutta takes it into the ring. Fray invites you to tell a story and Moments asks you to collaborate on one. You can Be Funny (or Die), or rock out while developing your fan base. There are even artist friendly marketplaces: sites like Pixish and Deviant Art facilitate the sale of creative work. And some artists use social media tools to make it happen on their own.

4. Smarty-Pants It Up

You know something about something. Even if it’s really nerdy stuff, there’s a place for you (or me – no finger pointing!). Demonstrate your expertise and provide others with (hopefully) useful info on your blog, with your comments on other blogs, or by responding to a problem on a crowdsourcing site (eg Innocentive). You can even develop something new or redesign something old.

5. Help others

Support a cause? Social Media provides you with a myriad of tools to be part of a solution. Help spread the word get donations, organize gatherings and more.

Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, that’s only five, right. Right!……

6. Distract yourself with ease!

Never before has it been so easy to procrastinate. You can socialize, write, read, avoid work and put off your impending thesis…  But hey, it’s social, man. And remember, you’re procrastinating on the cutting edge.

So…. has the social media improved your life? 

Monica Hamburg is a writer and social media evangelist in Vancouver, Canada. Her investigations and observations on social media, and its relation to business and connecting, form the basis of her blog, “Me Like the Interweb”.

One thing I have come to realize is that many bloggers simply rely on truthiness when making decisions. For those readers unfamiliar with Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report, “truthiness” is a satirical term defined as “the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination.”

Of course some people have a natural instinct for blogging and it therefore makes perfect sense to follow their gut – Leo Babauta and Seth Godin instantly come to mind as examples. But if your blog is drifting in the doldrums, or even if it has achieved a moderate level of success, what would happen if you relied less on truthiness, and more on the truth?

To help you better understand what I mean, the following are some ways that you can stop relying on start relying on solid evidence and facts with your blogging:

Adsense. If you have read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, you will be well aware that small things can make a big difference. This is especially true when it comes to having Google Adsense on your blog. Small, seemingly insignificant changes – eg placing an ad block on the left rather than the right, choosing a particular color, choosing a particular size, etc – can mean the difference between you making a few cents a day and making some serious dollars. So don’t just rely on your gut when making these decisions. Test, tweak and finely tune your Adsense settings and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Content. In this recent article on ProBlogger, Wendy Piersall from Sparkplugging wrote that one of her tipping points was: “the day I changed my editorial decisions from what I wanted to say and based them instead on what readers wanted to read as determined by analytics and reader feedback.” Such an approach will not be for everyone, but if you have dreams of your blog becoming wildly popular it may be in your interest to pay better attention to what your readers want via the methods Wendy suggests: analytics and feedback.

Keywords. Are you picking keywords for your articles simply because they just feel right? You may be surprised at the search popularity of some words vs. others. Here are a few tools that may help you better incorporate keywords into your articles:

• Keyword suggestion tool
• SEO tools
• Google Adwords keyword tool

Feedback. Good constructive feedback can be hard to come by. One suggestion I have relates to subscribers. With Feedburner it is possible to receive an email whenever people unsubscribe. It is then, of course, possible to email them and ask them that all important question: why? Who knows? You may pick up some insight into your blog that you would have otherwise remained clueless to….

Do you have any success stories where you tossed aside truthiness, and instead focused on testing, evidence and feedback to improve your blog? Please share them in the comments below.

Book Giveaway Winners

Thank you to everyone who replied our question last Friday: “how you do motivate yourself?” As a few of you pointed out, the prospect of winning a good book is obviously a very good motivator.

We received some fantastic answers, so if you are looking for some motivation related tips and advice be sure to read the responses to the post, How Do You Motivate Yourself?

The following readers will receive a copy of Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience: Dave from Entreprenurses Community Interest Company, Traveler from Traveler’s Tales, Frank Sconzo, Josh, Benjamin M. Strozykowski from Stroz.net, MLP, Kent from The Financial Philosopher, Salar Madadi from A Man Reborn, Ann from One Bag Nation and Julian.

If your name appears here, I will be in contact over the weekend to get your mailing address. If it doesn’t, stay tuned as we have another book giveaway coming up in the near future.

Also, I’ve been taken off the Top Stumbler page. I haven’t received a notice but I’m inclined to believe the events are connected. It will be interesting to see how my StumbleUpon traffic is affected.

If it goes down or disappears so be it. A site shouldn’t be dependent on social media anyways. My aim with the original post was to help others drive a bit of traffic to their sites and share my insights about social media.

I knew this was a risk before I posted, but decided to do it anyway. I don’t see how I could have violated any rules, although I have used the system and the nature of social media to my advantage.

It’s funny how people will punish you for pointing out how a system works. I’m sure there are many others using the same technique, but when I wrote about it I somehow undermined the community despite contributing many high quality pages.

I’m confident nearly every page I submitted would have made it into StumbleUpon sooner or later. I just found a good way to get there first. Maybe they’re worried about people trying buy Stumbles, which is understandable.

Gaming will always be a factor is social media. I’m no idealist. On the web, traffic is king. StumbleUpon sells traffic by slipping ads in with regular sites. Everyone knows about this and is fine with it. But when someone else uses the system to their advantage it is considered exploitation.

StumbleUpon makes a point of not disclosing many user numbers. They actually just removed the Audience figure. This has it’s pros and cons, but certainly leads to a lack of transparency. I’m curious to see how this all pans out, especially with the recent buyout.

Everyone knows social media sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon can drive massive amounts of traffic to your website. IF you can get on the front page.

The problem is that most submissions drop like an anvil through the new queue without getting more than one or two votes.

I can’t tell you how to become a power user on Digg or Reddit. I’ve had some luck with those sites but no consistent success, and I have a feeling it takes more effort and social networking than most webmasters want to do.

What I will tell you is how I’ve used StumbleUpon to drive nearly 80,000 visitors to this website without dramatically changing my web browsing habits or pestering people to vote for me.

Although StumbleUpon doesn’t create peaks as high as Digg or Reddit, it does offer two significant advantages:

1. Consistency – When you make the front page of Digg or Reddit you get a huge surge of traffic for about a day with some lingering effects the day after. Three days later you wouldn’t know it ever happened (aside from the wonderful incoming links). StumbleUpon continues to drive traffic to your site for days, even weeks, after the initial surge.

2. Pageviews – Digg and Reddit users generally read an article and leave your site immediately, viewing an average of 1.20 pages (according to my stats). The average Stumbler views a significantly higher 1.80 pages. Apparently those curious stumblers read more articles and are more likely to become regular readers.

Social Media Arbitrage

Now that I’ve told you why you should want use StumbleUpon to your advantage, here’s how to do it. The method is relatively simple and I’m sure many others are using it. It stems from two observations:

1. The Social Media Snowball – I noticed that when a post becomes popular on Reddit, it is basically guaranteed to take off on StumbleUpon as well. When a post becomes popular on one social site, it’s odds of doing so on another site dramatically improve.

2. Great Content Gets Around – All the major social sites have unique communities with varying tastes. But that doesn’t stop them from loving the same content. An interesting article is an interesting article. If you can find a post Digg users love, there is a great chance Reddit users will love it too, and vice versa.

These two observations led me to the strategy of Social Media Arbitrage. Arbitrage is defined as, “The purchase of securities on one market for immediate resale on another market in order to profit from a price discrepancy.” For social media, this means going to the popular pages of Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, and submitting popular stories to other social sites where they haven’t been submitted yet.

It sounds too easy to work and this is partially true. It doesn’t work well for Digg or Reddit because 1) there is too much competition to submit to these sites. Most pages already are already submitted. And 2) the number of incoming submissions is so massive that even great submissions (from average users) are often ignored.

But fortunately, it does work well for StumbleUpon. If you always wanted to become a respected user but had no idea where to find great content to submit, this is the answer.

Becoming a Power Stumbler

I wrote this post because today I became a newly minted Top Stumbler. If you go to the Top Stumbler’s Page (as of 4/17/07) you’ll see my ugly mug, probably on the bottom half of the page (username: pickthebrain). All I did to get there is submit newly popular stories from Digg and Reddit as well every great post I find during casual feed reading. The StumbleUpon toolbar makes this incredibly easy.

To drive traffic, I also Stumble many of my own posts. Without fail, StumbleUpon sends at least a few hundred visitors over the course of the day. My friends with blogs have reported similar results.

Most people view social media as a form of entertainment and not much more. But if you’re already using it, why not expend a bit more effort and use it to drive traffic to your website?

Now that you know how it’s done, get out there and take away my competitive advantage!

Update: Alas, someone has read this post and I’m no longer a Top Stumbler.

Although I normally stay clear of crowded tech topics, I’ve decided to do a short review of Joost because they made me feel special by giving me access to the private Beta version.

This is also the next step in the convergence of television and internet media. The success of Joost could have a big effect on how we watch TV in the future.

So what is Joost? This is the description from their site:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

Sounds great doesn’t it? But how well can they deliver?

Picture

Definitely not bad, but I wouldn’t call it a high-quality full-screen picture. It looks great at small sizes, but in full-screen mode the quality is pretty low. I’d put it on par with the quality you get when watching shows on NBC or ABC websites.

Update: On second glance the picture looks a lot better than I thought. Definitely better than nearly all internet video.

Channels

Here is a list of the channels currently available:

• Comedy Central
• MTV
• GameStar TV
• IndieFlix Premier Hits
• Fight Network
• The Soccer Channel
• PokerHeaven TV
• Bite TV
• Off the Fence Docs
• Saturday Morning TV
• Live @ Much
• Guiness World Records TV
• LX.TV
• Lime
• TERRA: The Nature of Our World
• Braindead
• JumpTV Arabia
• Fifth Gear Shortcuts
• Havoc Action Sports TV
• What’s Popular
• Warner Bros. Records
• IndyCar Series
• Lazy TV
• National Geographic
• Joost Suggests

That’s a pretty long list, but besides Comedy Central, MTV, and National Geographic, there aren’t any big names. Still, I think they’ve done a good job assembling entertaining programming (fights, music, action sports) that will appeal to a young base of users.

At the moment the number of available shows is still very low. Most of the ones they have listed aren’t working yet, but I expect this to change once they launch the public version.

The Interface

Here is a shot of the full screen interface.

This is a shot of the channel menu interface.

This is a shot of just the main control panel.

My initial impression of the interface is good. It’s intuitive, I didn’t really have any problem navigating between channels and shows. It is a bit slow though when switching between programs, but still much quicker than moving between videos on YouTube. Hopefully this improves in the final version.

Ads

I haven’t watched enough to be sure, but it looks like Joost places short ads within the content and possibly at the end. This is very similar to what they do on the network sites.

It definitely creates a TV like experience. The one hang up is the amount of content and the quality of the picture. I can’t wait for the day when computer and television are integrated into one monster machine.

So far I like it, and could see myself watching shows on Joost IF it has the programming I want. Who knows if it will take off, with competition from Apple TV and the already popular video sites. Regardless, TV is coming online, and line between online and traditional media is getting even blurrier.

Rummage through Paul Graham’s collected essays. I wrote about his piece on startups a week ago. Since then I’ve realized his writing covers a broad range that goes far beyond the tech industry.

Graham writes with an informal, meandering style that questions accepted beliefs and leads to surprising conclusions. When reading him, I don’t feel like I’m being preached to or instructed. It’s more like sharing a conversation with an old friend. Ideas are shared without egotism. The conclusion doesn’t matter, only finding the truth.

This style differentiates Graham from other writers. He isn’t trying to sell himself or an idea. He isn’t trying to build authority in a niche. This is a guy who’s already made it and just wants to discuss what’s on his mind.

Graham doesn’t try to think for you, he thinks with you. The essays are rather long, so set aside some time. Don’t try to skim. He goes on so many tangents that you’ll get lost.

My favorites so far:

• Hiring is Obsolete – Graham takes a look at the way the business world is changing. Evidently people don’t do their best work in drab, uniform office buildings.
• Is It Worth Being Wise? – An attempt at differentiating wisdom and intelligence and an investigation into how human evolution has changed the perception of both.
• The Age of the Essay – An examination of how we’re taught to write in school and a prediction for the next era of individual expression.

If anyone takes the time to read any of the essays, please take a minute to leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to discuss.

This is a bit off topic for this blog so I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Note: I’m not trying rip on other social sites and take a beat down from their supporters (even though I probably will regardless). I use and enjoy all the sites mentioned in this post. This is merely an expression of personal preference. Different strokes for different folks, or so they say.

1. No News – Or at least none if you aren’t looking for it. The news junkies own Digg and Reddit, where political and tech buzz stories dominate the front page. This is nothing new, but these stories all seem the same to me, and only 1 in 20 brings anything new to the table. I love to Stumble because I don’t have to go past the first page and into subtopics to find something interesting.

2. The Most Democratic Voting Process – While the other sites are dominated by buzz, I’ve found that Stumbling brings me the most quality sites. Because the voting process isn’t contingent on headlines, attention is based on content instead of sensationalism. The result is the cream of the crop rises to the top with less resistance.

3. No Work – No sifting through a page full of headlines trying to decide what to read. StumbleUpon makes it simple by sending you straight to a page it thinks you’ll like. It takes the middle man out, the middle man being your indecision, and the results are impressive. Even if you don’t like a site, a new alternative is a click away.

4. Wonderful Surprises – Does anyone else love the feeling of rolling the dice every time they hit the Stumble button? Nothing is better for finding something you like that you didn’t even know you liked. Whether you want something totally new or information about a specific topic, it leads to new resources that are outside your internet bubble.

Side note: Stumbling “photoshop tutorial” lead to many more quality results than an identical Google search.

5. A Pleasant Community – The Digg or Reddit users might not comment on a site, but they love to leave scathing comments back at the submission. I’m all for constructive disagreement, but from what I’ve seen, most of these people are just bitter. With StumbleUpon, these trolls don’t exist, or least they’re kept out of sight.

So there you have it. If you don’t already, you should start Stumbling. If you already do, then you know what I’m talking about.

Edit: I couldn’t resist adding this quick tip after it came to mind. It’s really simple, and a lot of you probably do it already, but I’ve found that using StumbleUpon in conjunction with del.icio.us is a great way to save your favorite stumbles and return to them later. Whenever I want to build a collection of resources, for say Photoshop or Wordpress, I just stumble those keywords and use del.icio.us to tag all the best finds. This is the easiest way to build a great collection of resources. You have to love it when separate tools work together.