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shawn farner

*feeding* the social media obsession


Twitter fires ‘Sandy’, messes up bigNovember 26

In case you haven’t heard, Twitter has acquired values of n, the web startup responsible for productivity tools Stikkit and I Want Sandy.  These are two great apps, and upon reading, you might characterize this as a great move by Twitter to diversify their offerings.  Except it’s not.

On December 8, 2008, both Stikkit and I Want Sandy will be shut down, leaving a gaping void to fill in many GTD systems.  In the case of I Want Sandy, users will suddenly find themselves without their scheduling, reminder and to-do list service in less than two weeks’ time.  It seems that Twitter bought values of n not to explore other avenues in the web space, but instead to bring on values of n founder Rael Dornfest as an employee.  Sadly, two more web apps will now bite the dust.

So, why would Twitter buy the company and IP’s? Why not allow Rael to sell the services to another company, one that might keep them online? Or better yet - why wouldn’t Twitter just keep these apps online, themselves?  These are the questions many are asking at I Want Sandy’s customer support board, where the few congratulatory posts for Rael are drowning under a tidal wave of angry posts from jaded ‘Sandy’ loy

Go down swingingNovember 7

Anyone who follows me on Twitter probably knows that I haven’t been having very much fun lately.  I’m the Fundraising Chair for Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity here at IUP.  I have what should be a pretty easy job description - make the fraternity money.  I had a few ideas of things I wanted to do that I feel would have been pretty successful but, unfortunately, things got mixed up along the way.

We started the semester almost broke due to poor money management from previous officers.  This meant that I had very little money to spend in order to make money.  We decided to make working security at Heinz Field events mandatory for every brother and pledge.  This meant that I not only had to be a fundraiser, I had to become an expert in scheduling and logistics.

On top of the Heinz Field requirement, we also required that brothers and pledges complete three fundraising hours for the semester.  So not only was I scheduling everyone to go to Pittsburgh to work security, I was also trying to plan other fundraising events - just so people could meet their requirements.  Of course, there were snags along the way; Heinz Field switched security firms on us, we had to go through all new training with their new company and not everyone could make it.  I was forced to try and strike a fair compro

Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 Wrap-upOctober 20
Justin Kownacki, a Podcamp Pittsburgh co-founder. (Image credit: pittprjns)

Justin Kownacki, a Podcamp Pittsburgh co-founder. (Image credit: pittprjns)

This past weekend I attended my very first podcamp, Podcamp Pittsburgh 3.  All I can say is this - if a Podcamp has even half the energy of PCPGH3, it’s definitely worth going to.

Here are the sessions I attended:

PodCamp Pittsburgh: Are you going?October 13

PodCamp Pittsburgh 3

I am!

If you plan on attending, I’d love to meet you!  You can find me on Twitter (@shawnfarner) and FriendFeed pre-Camp, but feel free to call or text me during the unConference at 717-514-0071 (especially if you’re a startup that’s hiring around, say, the end of the year ;).

I’m really looking forward to keeping tabs on the Twitter backchannel, as it’s somewhat impossible to attend all sessions at once!  I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to go to for the most part, although one session is a lock - Chris Brogan’s.  I’ve never had the opportunity to see him present before, so I’m surely not going to miss that.

If you have any suggestions on what I should check out, let me know!  Here’s the PCPGH3 schedule.

That’s all for now.  If you’re going to PodCamp, I’ll see you there!

Share and Enjoy:
Are you being someone else on your blog?August 6

A friend and I were reminiscing about the good old days of Xanga - a blog/journal hosting service that we used (along with many of our friends) to chronicle our lives and our thoughts.  As we moved from high school to college, our Xangas started to become less and less frequently updated until, finally, we stopped updating them altogether.

Since then, I’ve moved on to a more serious type of blogging.  I’ve started to write about the fields that interest me and have used my blog as more of a branding tool than as a place to talk about my life.  My hilarious (and sometimes R-rated) rants have been replaced by posts about Twitter and my thoughts about social media.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself - is this me?  Is this what I really want to talk about?  Would I use these words?

I’m finding out more and more that the answer has to be yes, at least here.  Shawn Farner can be found inside the domain name.  Shawn Farner can be found in the blog itself.  All of my social networking accounts, most of which have a link to this blog, have Shawn Farner as the user name.  There is no escaping the fact that this blog now belongs to Professional Shawn. Consider Professional Shawn an alter-ego of sorts, like Clark Kent is for Superman (except not as super).  As long as thi