This is a guest blog post from Chris Ronan. He is pursing his Masters of Science degree in Journalism at The University of Kansas. This is his submission for a project regarding “the identity of self on social websites.” Chris Ronan is the communications manager for Crown Center Redevelopment Corp., a mixed-used development on the southern edge of downtown Kansas City, MO.

Picture what a completely web-connected person would look like. What do you see? More than 1,000 Facebook friends. Daily tweets? Regular Foursquare check-ins?

That person exists and his name is Ramsey Mohsen. A consultant for Overland Park-based Digital Evolution Group, Mohsen is a self-described “internet addict.”  His Facebook profile lists more than 1,300 friends and a link to his personal website. On that site, one will see links to his pages on Flickr (4,600 photos), YouTube (167 videos), LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, del.icio.us and friendfeed.

In short, Mohsen has gone “all in” on the social website experience, both personally and professionally. His life is, by all indications, an open book. As a result, he is recognized as one of Kansas City’s most connected “influencers.” Ingram’s magazine named him to its inaugural class of “20 in their Twenties.” He is often invited to speak at conferences or be interviewed by media for his thoughts on social media.

I’ve known Mohsen since 2006, when we worked together on the redesign of Crown Center’s website. From the beginning, I was impressed with his web savvy. But he was 23 at the time and I was certain he couldn’t continue his level of connectivity without it adversely affecting his personal development.

Recently, I interviewed the 27-year-old Mohsen and learned that he has, by all appearances, proven me wrong. Not only does social media not control him, he has managed to use it for personal, professional and charitable purposes. So how has he done it and what can his experience teach others?

Many social development experts are troubled by the degree to which young people are exposed to media and technologies. In the June 2009 issue of Phi Delta Kappan (the publication of the Professional Education Association), Diana D. Coyl writes, “Text messaging and e-mails provide limited or no access to other people’s emotions, and the rich language of nonverbal communication that occurs in real-time interactions is lost. In addition, the quality of family time may be compromised if parents or children are using technology.”

In fact, parents could be the biggest factor in whether social media augments or overtakes a person’s life. That was certainly the case for Mohsen.

Of course, parental influence can only go so far. Mohsen acknowledges that he’s endured a few missteps along the way to becoming the well-adjusted social media addict that he appears to be.

Speaking of extremes, Mohsen’s social web experience took a pretty extreme turn two years ago, when he became a beta tester for Justin.tv. He wore a camera-enabled hat that broadcasted his every move to voyeurs in more than 250 countries. And he says that experience was what really made him comfortable with social technology.

Mohsen has grown up with technology to a degree that few others have. And it appears his self-development has only benefited from the experience.

I believe many of those who are concerned about the potential negative impact of social media on self-development have lumped it and other new emerging technologies with other so-called negative technologies like television and video games. The concern, which I admit to sharing in the past, is that people will become so engrossed in what’s on the screen that they won’t truly experience what’s happening off the screen. That, in turn, could stunt a person’s development of “self.”

Ramsey Mohsen has shown that it doesn’t have to be that way. He’s learned to use social media to augment his life. Inevitably, his self-identity has been largely affected and defined by the web. But it’s been refined, too. After all, his annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party, which is driven by social media, has raised more than $25,000 for Operation Breakthrough. Social websites have helped him identify and become the kind of person he wants to be.

Since I’ve purchased my Canon S90, I’ve learned that my point-and-shoot camera can produce awesome results. You don’t need to buy an expensive DSLR to get fun and awesome photos. Take for instance, this one. This photo was taken right outside of Wrigley Field, walking out of a 7-Eleven. We were just making a quick pit-stop and as we were walking out I pulled out my camera for a quick action shot (from my hip). Doesn’t this photo remind you of a movie poster? It’s the candid facial expressions from my friends, that make this seemingly like a scene from a movie. I really like this one. The whole Chicago trip is posted to my flickr account if you’re interested and want to see more.

Recently, I spoke at the #PRevolution workshop about Personal Branding (sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America, Wichita chapter). I discussed how the social media tools (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc) are what enable you. These free tools allow anyone to publish. More importantly, because of Google, and it’s frequency of usage, you have the opportunity to stand-out and be found online. You have a digital footprint online, and you can influence your footprint through smart, authentic and consistent use of social media tools.

I also shared tactical tips, like my “4:1 rule”. In the spirit of open research and sharing, I’ve posted my PPT presentation to slideshare.

If you’re looking for resources or other opinions on Personal Branding, here’s some great links to check-out:

• WIRED: Self-Service: The Delicate Dance of Online Bragging
• Kathy Hansen: Personal Branding is dead? / Long Live Personal Branding
• Jeremiah Owyang: Personal vs. Career Brands
• Mitch Joel: Personal Branding R.I.P.
• Fortune: Building Your Brand (and keeping your job)
• Chris Brogan: Personal Branding Basics

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I admit it. I miss video blogging. It’s been a while. So I shot a quick mini-movie review about the movie Catfish.

Remember that movie I told you about? The one I was really excited to watch? I watched a free screening tonight (thanks social media club of Kansas City!). The bottom-line is this documentary lives up to the hype (of the intriguing trailer). It’s well edited, candid and even leaves you thinking about undertones from the movie, specifically the state of society today now that we have all this technology easily at our reach.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

You should interview your foursquare mayor.

I stumbled upon this blog post featuring a sandwich shop in San Francisco. It is a stupid simple editorial idea: interview your foursquare mayor. Obviously, the Saigon Sandwiches’ foursquare mayor is a loyal customer. Why not celebrate them? Give them vanity. Reward them. It’s likely they’ll feel warm and fuzzy about being promoted. That’s not a bad thing right? And it’s likely they’ll pass it along, or link to it, and tell their friends about it.

Leveraging the Foursquare brand/tool is a great way to illustrate relevance in your marketing efforts in a time which social media tools are all the rage.

If you want achieve success with your social media efforts, you must give your audience a reason to show up and why they should come back for more. I believe “if you build it, they won’t come.” Promoting others (people) is a great technique to be relevant and interesting (Chris Brogan would agree). And it follows the “4:1 Rule”.

[golf claps] to Saigon Sandwiches and Zagat.com. Interviewing your foursquare mayor is a smart idea. I like it.
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I’ve learned that my favorite photos are just fantastic accidents that happen to have really good timing. I took this photo when I was in Chicago. We were out, riding in a taxi cab, and I thought it would be fun to try to capture “in motion” photo by sticking my hand out the window. Pretty cool huh? The whole Chicago trip is posted to my flickr account if you’re interested and want to see more.

I don’t need to cite any statistics or show you fancy bar graphs to prove to you a lot of people use Facebook (over 500 million and growing, OK, that one slipped). Many users have wondered why there isn’t a “Dislike” button? In fact, there’s even a FB page with 3 million protesting this.

I think Facebook should never create a “Dislike” button. Ever.

It’s in their best interest not to. Here’s why:

Lots of people use Facebook every day. Many check it several times a day. Facebook allows us to stay connected to people and businesses we choose. The layout, interface, design and tools- Facebook sets the “stage” for the interactions to happen (between real people). Think about it …if you logged into Facebook and didn’t have any friends, the website would be blank. Thus, the developers and designers at Facebook hold a lot of influence in how these interactions are facilitated. The tools they create enable us. It connects us. It allows us to social network easily without constraints to time, physical location and space. This is what makes Facebook great. It’s designed well and constantly being updated.

OK, so what’s my point?

My point is, if you were able to click a “Dislike” button for things your friends were posting, it would empower users with the ability to express hate …easily. Too easily. It’s only 1-click. Imagine uploading a picture of yourself, or dog, or family, or writing a status update in which you were sharing good news about yourself. Seeing negative counts/feedback from your friends telling you they “Dislike” something could have significant implications for the emotions and feelings people associate with their experience using Facebook. Processing this type of sentiment is a lot for one’s self-esteem. If someone continual received “Dislikes”, the negative feelings could and would be associated and indirectly displaced to the website, Facebook. Furthermore, why would anyone want to continue to use a tool that makes it so easily to spread negativity about things people are sharing? Just imagine the types of pictures, video, content and status updates people would create just to get people to click the “Dislike” button.

More-so, the advent of the “Dislike” feature would inject a sense of fear, hesitation, or worry in people’s heads that what they’re sharing/posting could be easily returned with negative feedback from their friends and family.

So amiright? Who’s with me?

Or am I wrong?

Do you think there needs to be a “Dislike” button?
(please click “Like” on this blog post if you agree there shouldn’t be a “Dislike” button!)
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1.) Watch this movie trailer.

2.) After watching the trailer, are you as intrigued as I am about what happens at the end!?

Perhaps this is just a great trailer or teaser- but if the movie is half as good, it should be interesting. I’m also excited the Social Media Club here in Kansas City is giving away free passes to the AMC screening of the movie!

It’s fun to see more movies like this are being made like The Social Network and We Live In Public. Technology is certainly finding it’s place on the big screen. Which makes me wonder, when is Twitter “the movie” coming out?

I snapped this photo during the Girl Talk concert here in Kansas City at the Crossroads KC (Grinder’s). The concert was incredibly fun. If you’ve never heard of Girl Talk, don’t let his name throw you off. He’s a fun mashup DJ from Pennsylvania. If you want to see how, check out this behind the scenes video of how he makes cut/edits his music. And make sure you download his latest album (it’s free).

Mobile is exploding.

People who access the internet from a mobile device has increased dramatically over the last year. 55% percent of cell phone internet users go online from their mobile phone on a daily basis (Pew). And AT&T has reported a 4,932% increase in mobile traffic. Of course, these statistics come as no surprise. Many of us have device addiction to our iPhones and Blackberrys (admittedly, i’m one of those people). However, the majority of websites aren’t designed to be displayed on a smaller screen. They’re often hard to navigate, and if you don’t have an iPhone or the website is in Flash …forget about it.

The project.

That said, recently, I lead the team that designed and launched the mobile optimized version of Ferrellgas.com. After review of their analytics, it was determined a significant percentage of users were accessing the website with mobile phones. We concluded that designing a mobile optimized version of the website was the right approach vs. designing an mobile application (e.g. iPhone or Android). It’s important to note, designing an “app” requires your users to download, install, then run the application in order to consume the information. This is asking a lot of your users to do. For this project, the technographics and mobile usage was determined as low. Therefore, we decided to design a mobile optimized website. This means, when visitors go to www.ferrellgas.com through a mobile phone, we can detect this, and automatically redirect them to a website optimized for their phone screen size.

Focus on key tasks.

When determining what to feature on the mobile version of the website, we focused on what the key tasks users want to accomplish, while keeping in mind the context of their visit is from their phone. Knowing they’re accessing the website through their phone allows us to narrow the focus on features and navigation options. Designing for mobile forces you to determine what matters most. Losing 80% of your screen forces you to focus. (source: LukeW).

You can see there is a difference between the full version of the website and the mobile optimized version. Simple, focused, and easy-to-use.

The end-result.

Try it out yourself if you’d like. Go to www.ferrellgas.com on your mobile phone and you’ll see the end-result. If you’d like to see other examples, there’s a couple great galleries and directories such as cssiphone.com and mobileawesomeness.com you should check out.
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This weekend, I was driving downtown here in Kansas City this weekend and had to stop in the street to let ELEPHANTS cross the street. Awesome. The Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey were in town performing at the Sprint Center and their afternoon show had just ended. I was lucky enough to run into them walking back the elephants. Pretty neat huh!? (fyi: i posted the set to flickr).