I just read this piece and absolutely love it. This dude seriously hit the nail on the head.

I think this is why I hate being anonymous. Out of all the stupid anonymous blogs I’ve started up over the years (there have been plenty), I’ve only actually kept one of them alive and it’s fairly new. Honestly, I doubt it will last long.

I hate being anonymous. I like having a name. I like attaching my name to opinions, and I like people knowing it’s ME, Alex Priest, not some faceless figure in a crowd. I don’t even care if people know it’s me when I’m wrong or when I screw up, or when I say something stupid. Out of 60,000-some-odd tweets, I’m sure I’ve said plenty of stupid things in 140 characters or less and dammit, I’m proud of it. Or least I’m proud that I learned from those mistakes.

Anonymity is bullshit.

I mean really. Who thinks they’re special for being anonymous? You’re not being anonymous because you want people to focus on “your content” or any of that crap. You’re probably anonymous because you’re too chicken to let your own words actually be attached to your reputation. Anonymity is the lamest way to be a conformist. Yea—I just called you out. And I called me out because I’m just as guilty of it as anybody else, at some points.

Anyway, read the piece. You won’t regret it. It’s fascinating and it makes you think. I guess that’s the whole point.

I’m not going to make any guarantees on frequency or quality, but I’m looking forward to getting more of my ideas written down, and less rolling around in my head when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. I’m a big believer that writing is an incredibly important activity to undertake. I’m lucky that I have a job where I write a lot, and I write enough through other sources that I manage to get my fix when I need it. That said, there’s always more to say.

So here I am. More to come, soon!

So USA Today gives me way more credit than I probably deserve, but they’ve given me the privilege of hosting a roundtable chat on blogging and social media this Thursday, December 2.

In the chat we’ll talk about how to get started blogging, some of the different blogging platforms, and how you can leverage all the social media tools out there to build your own online brand that effectively represents who you are and what you have to offer the world.

I hope you can join me for the chat! Post any questions you have in advance of the chat on this page and then come right back to this page on Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m. to join in the conversation. Looking forward to chatting with you then!

Check it out:

For people running WordPress.org installations, it’s super easy to install–you just drop the line of code in where you want it to go. For me, for example, it goes in a tiny footer at the bottom of each of my posts.

The only minor hiccup I had when installing it was getting it to tweet the correct entry title and URL when someone clicked on the button from my homepage. Because you’re technically on my homepage, the button’s default settings led users to tweet nothing but my homepage and the URL for alexpriest.com. Thankfully, it’s a super, super quick fix.

The line of Twitter code is simple:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/share” class=”twitter-share-button” data-count=”horizontal” data-via=”alexpriest”>Tweet</a>

This, by itself, will do nothing but create a Tweet button sharing the current page. In order to get it to tweet the correct post (even from the homepage), you need to add these two bits of code to the link HTML in the Twitter button:

data-text=”<?php the_title(); ?>” data-url=”<?php the_permalink() ?>”

This makes it so that the text of the tweet is the title of your entry (<?php the_title(); ?>) and the link is the permalink to that post (<?php the_permalink() ?>). In the end, my final code looks like:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/share” class=”twitter-share-button” data-text=”<?php the_title(); ?>” data-url=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” data-count=”horizontal” data-via=”alexpriest”>Tweet</a>

Are you hosting an upcoming event? Let me know (tweet at me, post a comment, or even shoot me an e-mail)! I’d be happy to list it to the left and attend, if at all possible. And of course, if I attend, I’ll likely tweet about it plenty as well (@alexpriest).

As most of you know–if any of you are still reading this–I’ve been on a sort of unannounced hiatus since the end of March, largely due to school responsibilities and, well, lack of time. This isn’t to say that I’ve gotten less busy, necessarily, but I have resolved to make writing a bigger part of my life (again) and get back writing some regular material for my own personal blog, right here. I’ll be blogging elsewhere, as well, but I’ll post more on that soon.

You’ll notice that along with the new writing, as usual with me, comes a new design. I have no doubt I’ll be tweaking, modifying and possibly outright changing this template over the coming weeks, but for now I’m happy enough with it to kick this off and present it to the interwebs. By all means, please (please) give me feedback! I’d love to hear what complaints, issues, etc. you might have with it, particularly regarding design and usability. My goal was to place a lot of focus on the content (tada!) while still making archives, links, search, etc. very accessible. You’ll also notice all my links there in the sidebar, with their fancy social-network-color-appropriate hover and everything.

And another thing. You’ll notice I’ve built in Facebook’s new open graph API and Twitter’s @anywhere service into my blog now. This was partly an experiment just so I could learn the basics of the two new APIs, but partly because I’m excited to have them on here. So now, for example, you can hover over my Twitter handle, @alexpriest, and see a hovercard. In addition, you can “like” this post by clicking the button below (so please do!).

Anyway, that’s enough about bloggy-stuff, on to some real opinion/news/ranting soon enough. Mostly on social media and technology–with a little politics and personal life thrown in. Thanks for reading.

In other words, bear with me. I’m going to need lots of motivation over the next month and a half or so!

In addition, I’m on the look out for social media professionals who might be interested in helping me out with a quick interview via phone, e-mail or in person. This semester I’m completing my first honors capstone, for communications, focusing on social media and its impact on politics, social movements and the traditional news media. Are you a thought leader in this industry? Are you a thought leader in any of those industries? Let me know! I’d love to talk to you and gain some more insight as I work to complete the project.

The “deliverable” for this product will actually be in the form of a Web site. Because I’m titling the project “The Social Media Revolution,” the site will be hosted at SocMediaRev.com–not the easiest to say, but it’s the best I could snag; after all, “social media”-related domains are quite the hot commodity nowadays. Feel free to check out the site as you like, but keep in mind that right now, it’s simply a shell, and over the coming weeks it will be very much a work in progress. Please don’t judge! And of course, rest assured I’ll be blabbing all over the place once it’s finally finished.

Anyway, as always, thanks so much to my friends–and those of you I don’t know–reading my content here on this blog. And thanks so much to all my Twitter friends as well, who keep me motivated to stay active there, even if I can’t quite commit the time to posting blog entries as often as I’d like! More to come soon.

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]

Just a quick update tonight with a rapid-fire overview of what my weekend has been like. Friday and Saturday I devoted purely to Social Justice Camp DC, which was absolutely incredible. I met a ton of amazing people, learned a lot of amazing stuff and well, got inspired. But I really hate skimming over so much important information, so I’m going to do a great big write-up of the experience tomorrow or Wednesday and get that up here and out for all of yall to read. I’ll probably highlight a few of the causes I’m really excited to get involved with (probably this summer, when I have some more free time) and explain some of my own, personal, key takeaways from the (un)conference–I’ll explain the “unconference” part later too.

In addition, I got to spend some time with two of my best friends in the world who just recently moved back to D.C. In kind of an odd coincidence, they both moved away (one to Seattle, the other to Tampa, Florida) shortly before I left to go abroad. Now that I’m back in D.C., they’ve moved back as well! I couldn’t be happier about it. We had a great time hanging out and needless to say, I really missed them. I can say with 100% certainty they are going to make this semester much more fun and hopefully a little stressful than it might have been otherwise. Thanks guys, glad you’re back!

Finally, on my desk right now I’ve got no less than five post-its screaming at me with variations and extensions on my main to-do list. It’s long, diverse and about half-fun. Unfortunately some of the things on my list are pretty tedious: “update résumé”, “sort through Twitter favorites”, “finish AU merit awards profile”, “scholarship applications”… But others are pretty fun, things like: “evergreen column for The Eagle“, “make cookbook binder”, “write blog posts!” You get the idea.

After that we walked over to Capitol Hill Books and geeked-out wandering around stacks and stacks of amazing old books. They also have hysterical signs. And try as I might, I can never resist books–I picked up a copy of “The American Presidency” by Clinton Rossiter, published in 1956 (I believe I’ve got a 1959 edition–awesome). I don’t know when I’ll have time to read it, but I read the intro right there in the bookstore and I’m already engrossed.

Finally I wound up in Peregrine Espresso which is a fantastic little coffee shop with pretty lattes AND they have a Twitter account. I’m sold. I’ll be going back. I did a little reading and then biked back to Union Station so I could be a wuss and metro up the hill instead of having to bike up Massachusetts Ave. (it’s rough, okay?!).

Anyway, next up will be two exciting blog posts:

1. A good, thorough recap of Social Justice Camp DC (#sojuca!)
2. A look at the power of public relations as it can be related to the dissident media of early civil rights movements in America and the current news cycle + social media (that’s a little broad and vague yet, still working on it)

Keep your eyes peeled. Also, I’ve got my first story (story, not column–as in I’m playing the “reporter” role this time) coming out in The Eagle this Thursday! You’ll know it’s online when I do.