Well, sort of. I’m back, anyway.

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.

Well, maybe not entirely shameless self-promotion, but I did write it so I suppose it deserves a little disclaimer. This weekend will hopefully be a great one for productivity. With the incoming D.C. #snomgasm / #snowpocalypse2 / #snom (my personal favorite) / any number of other crazy hashtags, I’m hoping maybe it’ll give me a good excuse to lock myself indoors with a blanket, food, notes, a laptop and maybe a good book, if I manage to get a lot of work, writing and studying done.

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]

So you may remember me writing a bit about how my first story as a reporter would be coming out in today’s edition of our university newspaper, The Eagle. Well that’s not happening.

Evidently–and I wish I’d known this before I spent several hours work into the article–columnists aren’t allowed to report for The Eagle too. It’s one or the other. Either/or. Pick one, not two, “you can’t have it both ways.” I had wondered, at first, because I knew that major publications often had similar restrictions. However, this being a little university newspaper–and the editor and staff not questioning my authority to write an article–I figured it must be alright, in this circumstance.

Not so. After researching, interviewing, writing and finally submitting my piece, I was called the next day to hear that my piece would not be run, since I’m a columnist, too. Honestly, I think it’s a stupid rule–the article was written perfectly objectively, in my humble opinion, and I’ve separated the views of my column clearly from the information conveyed in my article. But nonetheless, it’s not going to happen. Because it’s not going to happen, I’m going to publish my article here. It sure won’t get as many eyeballs here as it would have in a print edition of The Eagle, but it’s better than nothing. Read it, if you like, and let me know what you think in the comments. I always appreciate feedback. Check it out below the cut.

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For the first time ever, I got published today! My first column in the American University student newspaper, The Eagle, was printed today. It’s also online!

My column is titled “Unsolicited Advice”, meaning that it’s advice for people who haven’t really asked for it (and might not even want it) but I’m giving it to them anyway. Check the link above to read my first column, advice for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, or click the “read more” to read it here on my blog. Comments are always appreciated!

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I, like any busy person, love lists. I love being able to flick through a news article or blog post, read a two-sentence introduction, and allow my eyes to flip quickly from bullet point to bullet point. I love numbered lists, where I can tell not only how far I am down the list, but how many more I have to go.

It’s a psychological thing. Anyone versed in business writing knows that it’s easier, quicker and simply more efficient to read lists and bullets than big long paragraphs. And nowadays, we’re all about reading short things, quickly (i.e. Twitter–140 characters, doesn’t get much shorter and quicker than that).

But I’ve just about reached my limit of end-of-the-year/decade/whatever top 10 lists. I just can’t handle it anymore! It seems like every where I’ve looked–starting December 1st and still ongoing–there’s another top 10 list for something. There’s lists of the top celebrities, top people on twitter, top books, top gadgets, top political scandals, top news stories, top movies, top albums… everybody and their brother has their top 10 list of [insert subject here] they want to share.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty too. Even today, I’ve tweeted at least one link to a top 10 list (Engadget’s wonderful Top 10 Gadgets of the Decade). But there just needs to be some kind of restraint here, it’s overwhelming!

I like how Time Magazine does it. They put ALL of their top 10 lists in one place, a neat little index for you to flip through, nice and organized and not too much to handle. But for things like Twitter, I feel like the service is just swamped with everyone’s lists for this and lists for that. It’s drowning out the content. The breaking news. The #FollowFridays (it seems I’m not the only one who almost forgot about that today–it seems totally absent from my feed, at least).

Thankfully, this only comes around once a year. And in a way, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure, reading all these lists. But when it gets to the point where all media is just saturated with it–like now–and the real content seems to disappear, I feel like it’s time to step back and ask: do we really need all these lists? What do you think?