I’m a huge fan of user generated content. I think the greatest copy, ideas, and criticism can come from your own users. However, there is such a thing as going too far.

Last night at some point, http://www.skittles.com switched its page to become a constant feed of a twitter search for skittles. Almost immediately, people began talking about all sorts of random, not-skittles related stuff, just to appear on the page. I even sent a message about prefering M&M’s to skittles (which I do).

You just can’t put unfiltered user content out there. Sorry. I learned this lesson the hard way years ago. Back when I was at Pseudo, I had to do an interview with Dick Morris, who at the time was embroiled in quite a scandal surrounding the Clinton white house. We had this fantbulous idea of showing the live chatroom on a plasma screen right in between the two of us during the interview.

As you can imagine, the room was filled with things that weren’t appropriate for anyone to see, much less the target of them – Dick Morris himself.

The ONLY way to do this kind of content is to very, very cautiously moderate. You don’t need only positive statements going out, actually, if you want to really show what your users are saying, you should include some negative statements. But you absolutely need to be able to block messages like this:

PMansellSheep: fighting the cult @ XENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUXENUoYOUoJUSToLOSToTHE

I don’t understand why Skittles didn’t know better, and why they haven’t taken the page down yet. There’s a warning that you need to be an adult…but when the first comment is “skittles sux,” does being over 18 matter? In my case with Pseudo, we yanked that chatroom screen down before I was 10 minutes into the interview.

Over the summer, a lot of concerts did a deal with Verizon where you could text a message to have it shown on the big screen. Those messages appeared quickly, and looked “live,” but they were heavily moderated. And I know this cuz, um, I sent something inappropriate to see if it’d get through. I had to try, I almost ALWAYS try. I sent “scream if you love porn,” which I thought would be fun. But nope – lots of “Scream if you love linkin park” and the like, but no joy for me.

There is also the question of privacy, something people have been talking about a lot lately. Is my Twitter appearing on Skittles going to be seen as an endorsement? Do they actually even have the rights to do it (I need to dig through various terms to figure that out – expect a follow up post when I have time to do that). I can’t block it…at least I can block myself from appearing in Facebook’s social ads. But this is a whole other thing, and not one I’m entirely sure I’m comfortable with.

All that said, would I have ever written a blog entry about Skittles today if they hadn’t done this? If “any press is good press,” then Skittles has done a fantastic job at that – everyone’s talking about them on Twitter. Not talking about the candy, of course, they’re talking about the mess on the Skittles homepage. In what probably took them 10 minutes, they redid their website to something that people can’t stop talking about. Well done for that.

In the long run, is this going to make me buy more candy? Absolutely not. But I will be pointing to this as an example of UGC gone bad for years to come.

So for that, thanks Skittles!!

I really can’t compare this conference to any other I’ve ever been to. The session topics are all over the map, some are similar to those you’d find at something like web 2.0, some are completely different.

The first afternoon session I attended was on identity and privacy online, I’m guessing pulled together after yesterday’s fantastic session. Some of the people here are the same as those in yesterday’s session, but a lot of them are different, with very different perspectives.

One of the big questions we keep coming up against is whether or not it is a good idea to maintain two online personalities, one public, one private. Some women here very much do, I personally think it’s impossible. For those that do maintain the second identity, how do you live behind it when so much you do is attached to your name or personal information?

The second, and final afternoon session was mine, on “how to launch a product.” I have had a lot of good (and pretty bad) experiences with product launches, so this was pretty much me just recounting all the things to remember when launching a product, and all the things that can go wrong.

Notes from both the sessions I gave will be online at shesgeeky.org – the ones from yesterday are there, the ones from today still need to be written by me (teehe – to do tomorrow).

This was a really fun conference, and a great two days.

Signing off from she’s geeky – proud geek, Stephanie BamBam

Ok, starting a new blog post for this session, since I got a little wordy before.

So! Next session – teenage girls and technology, sesion run by Lynn Langit, Microsoft Developer Evangelist.

This is a topic that’s very close to my heart. I was that little girl who wanted to learn how to program and I first started “programming” in BASIC when I was 7. It wasn’t easy AT ALL. The programming books I was using weren’t even at all helpful, all I could do was copy code into the computer and try to figure out what it meant. Tutorials didn’t really  exist, after all, operating systems were being rev’d faster than the books could be written. I’d spend hours typing hundreds of lines into the computer to learn how to draw a pretty picture (or something), and lose it all as soon as the computer as rebooted. Not a great environment for learning.

So! Microsoft has a program called Kodu that runs on X-Box (and is being ported to be for academic purposes) to help kids learn programming using a visual interface to make a game. Call it the second incarnation of Alice, which I was amazed with yesterday. This program is targeted at kids 7 and up, is multiplayer (wowie), and teaches them the basics of using objects, textures, and so on.

Another program is called Small Basic, which is, well, small basic. Lynn is demoing it by moving a turtle across the screen (no joke – turtle!), which is so cute. The environment is nice and easy for kids to use, and HELPFUL, there’s documentation split on the screen with the code.

It is really exciting to hear about these efforts going on for geeky girls. Previously, people kind of just sat around telling girls they could get into tech. “Sure you can be in tech, nothing’s stopping you.”

Finally it’s about action!! SHOW girls what they can do, show them other people doing the same.

Next up, a session about WordPress! Maybe I’ll learn how to make this blog look a bit less, oh, “clearly designed by a non-designer,” and get over my php issues.

Woooeeee I’m tired. Being a blabbermouth is exhausting!!

This afternoon I attended two sessions, one on personal identity, and one I gave on “creating the right product for the right audience.”

The identity session was fascinating to me. We all walk a very fine line between revealing information about ourselves online, and keeping things private. It’s very hard to know where the line is on what should and should not be said, and the line is very different for everyone.

There’s no question that it’s changed for me. At one point in my life, I was completely honest about everything in my life online. I maintained my live journal, which was locked to friends-only, and oh my, the secrets about me that were in there. I was also Bobbi, of course….BamBam didn’t come along until later.

At some point along the way, I realized that “friends-only” really didn’t mean much. Not only could I easily make a mistake and leave something open to the world, but god forbid a friend decided to be mean or something, they could easily take screenshots or copy/paste.

The words “private” and “online” simply do not belong together. No matter how locked down you may think things are, there’s always a way for things to get out.

So, in my case, “StephanieBamBam” was created at AOL. My friend Susan nicknamed me “BamBam” for being a klutz, and it stuck. The name was unique enough (your nickname has to be unique!) that it worked well, and I kinda liked it. StephanieBamBam took over, and everything Bobbi that I could find was pulled offline. You won’t find archives of those live journal entries, they don’t exist in digital form anymore. I pretty much recreated my virtual identity, changing from a pseudoanonymous “bobbi,” to a slightly more personal name I was willing to associate with the real me. There are some pieces of Bobbi still lingering about in various places, but you’d need to dig a bit to find, and honestly…if you’re going to dig THAT much…have at it. I’m not embarassed by anything I’ve done.

Admittedly, I’m in a special position, where I work online in social media. The session discussed things like people who truly cannot reveal their identities online due to safety reasons – how do they even use social media? How do you get a domain without a credit card in your fake name, how do you attend conferences, etc.

My recommendation – for most people – is don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want associated with you everywhere. You can live under a nickname, but live in the assumption that your real name will ultimately be exposed. Employers, schools…the world has access to ANYTHING you do or say online. Be smart.

The other session this afternoon was mine, so of course I thought it was fabulous. We talked about how to create a product for your market – how to know who you’re making what for. Professionally, I’ve created products targeted at adults, teens, and developers. And believe me, something that works for one will probably not work for the other.

So how do you know what to do? Be a teenager! Be a developer! Be an adult. That’s oversimplifying, obviously, but I’ve seen every single high school musical, read Twilight, watch Hannah Montana, belong to MyYearbook…. etc. I’m often called a teenager, even. Which is fine. People have got to remember that they are not building a product for themselves. Just because “this makes sense to me” doesn’t mean it’ll make sense to someone without the CS degree. Make your product for your audience, market your product to the right audience, and if you have a good product, it’ll work out.

More from She’s Geeky tomorrow – I’m giving another panel in the afternoon “how to launch a product.”

I have issues with a lot of conferences. The panels are rehashing the same stuff over and over and over, and the “real” work gets done at the parties or talks in the hall between sessions.

She’s Geeky is an “unconference,” meaning that there are no panels, long keynotes, or presentations. All we talk about is what we talk about. It’s awesome.

The first session I went to this morning was about gaming…and it wasn’t even my session, someone else ran it! It was fantastic, an hour or so just talking with a whole bunch of women as interested in games as I was. We also focused on areas of games that you wouldn’t hear at a typical conference – educational, children’s, casual games, that sort of stuff.

My big takeaway (in addition to meeting all these great women) was the discovery of a program called Alice. Not only does it have the same name as my fantabulous niece, but it is – get this – a 3d GAME that teaches kids programming. REAL programming. I am blown away, and am totally going to use it.

Liz Henry also has a good writeup on the session, and I will add links to others as they come online.

I’m currently in a session about twitter, talking on twitter. I think that says enough right there about how much Twitter effects our lives these days. As someone just said… “it is the ultimate elevator pitch.”