Yes, I can see that as a possible problem. I've seen fewer cliqueness in this crew (prehaps because they all come from varied educational and professional backgrounds), than I have in groups pulled mostly from tech academics and companies.
I've found it rewarding by seeing the team I helped hire, some of them eight years ago, do amazing things. I suppose, though, it might be time to speculate about my motivations and need for validation.
I'm sure there might be problems with choosing the wrong criteria, but I can't see how "elitism" in itself can be a cause of problems in the hiring process.
My college degree means nothing on paper professionally, but meant everything to my abilities to meet business and computing challenges. I didn't study computing at all. I don't expect that my experience is much different from others who have Liberal Arts degrees and found joy in technology.
I've worked with many people who have degrees and certification in computing and many who don't. As a result of my experience, I've rejected resumes from people who have studied computing and sought professional certifications solely, in preference to people who have English degrees and weird hobbies. Professional experience is supreme, but after that, I want a broad mind to tackle the problems at hand. While that's highly prejudicial, I've found it a very rewarding way to approach a stack of resumes.
"Branding" is a focus on perception, on advertising and promotion. "Identity" is a focus on developing your core values. The touchstone is whether or not what a company projects is decided by marketing strategy in isolation or by business development as a whole. Ideally, these are one in the same, but they rarely actually are coincidental.
When trust becomes of value, it will be traded. Sure, it isn't quite as nice and human as the person who goes to church in order to help his life insurance sales, and there is the layer of transferability that is new. But still...
I am really looking forward to when GPS is included in most point-n-click cameras. This idea is brilliant, but nothing compared to what can happen when you look at what might happen.
Whether it's a blog or a network or a community tool addon thingy, what you need most is to let people know that their contributions are both need and likely not redundant to others. Polls can get the ball rolling, but they are a gamble. Nothing is sadder than a three-day-old poll with two votes. Nothing is stopping you from boosting those numbers behind the scenes, though.
Don't expect people to chime in in a reaction to a specifically popular or unpopular opinion. "Me too" and "Screw you", despite their popularity in popular spots, are no fun to write and won't be written, even if strongly felt, in an empty room. Expressing a unique, rare, and non-antagonistic opinion, and then asking for others, is more likely to get reactions than "I like music, do you like music?" or "Taxes suck, am I right?"
Also, invite pride. If people have profiles or pages, let them create something that they can point others too. Allow for long, weird contributions.
To justify a parallel, separately-designed .mobi site, it takes a lot of traffic from handhelds AND serious design reasons to make the main site low-resolution-non-compliant (loreznoncom! I made up a Web 3.11 word!).
It's okay to design with 1024x768 in mind, but you have to also consider those who are using handheld devices, screenreaders, and don't forget the bots. Make it good for the most common, but don't let it break for the rare.
I use SPF from a slicehost IP for membership confirmations, more-than daily mailings to most members, and occasional announcements. No reported failures yet and all my tests have worked. I figured hitting a large percentage was enough. When volumes get high enough, I'll worry about what could only be a very small percent of failures.
The twitter problems remind me of most of the internet in general ten years, or a bit longer, ago. I would never, ever, use twitter for mission critical business communication, but for following friends' moods? For tracking trivial business announcements? For publishing my own blather, for playing with announce or even interactive bots? Why not?
I imagine a better, probably open source de-centralized protocol will come, and indeed good folks are working on it. But my friends and audience are already there and I already know they're hurting, so I know it's good play.
It seems like listing do's and don't in an opt-in network is a bit of whining. :)
But seriously, I do enjoy the way some people whine. Some comedians express great wit in whining. Why wouldn't I want to see that on twitter? I think twitter can be used for a lot of different purposes and those purposes (and the TOS) alone dictate the do's and don'ts.
I've actually started losing weight now. The trick was getting keyboard/monitor stand that can be adjusting to the standing position. It's not that we have to stay in one place, it's the sitting:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=3922069
Since current educational objectives in the U.S.A have shifted from genuine, classroom-centric education to national simplified standardized testing, and schoolteacher skills can only be evaluated on their ability to teach to the test, this result can hardly be surprising. Older, more experienced teachers are distracted by caring about students and schools rather than tests, and do weird things that most of us might recall as great educational experiences that only distract from filling in the right bubbles.
Yes, inexperienced teachers are probably significantly better. Soon, computers with marginally skilled babysitters can take their place. Better yet, since standardized tests are all that matter now, we should just buy computers that can take the standardized tests for the students and be done with it. We'll get simple, easy-to-understand numbers and won't have to trust anyone so unstable as an experienced teacher.
There are somethings we can't measure well, and measuring poorly is only going to deliver a false confidence. I don't propose another metric. I propose we don't measure something we can't.
Information:
A way of checking and tracking the actual polling processes of published opinion polls, including exact questions asked and calculations of margin of error. A way of tracking your person diets intake of different ingredient types, (transfats, hfcs, etc.) and rank health impacts. Meshes of lobbyists, industries, politicians involved in each vote. I can think of many more places where people should want more information but don't.
http://nshrine.com/ A place where social networking communities can share shrines, memorials, etc. It still has a chance, but its growth is pretty disappointing.
To re-emphasize/clarify previous statements, OpenID doesn't require visitors to know about OpenID. A website can offer a registration/login process that requires nothing more than the visitor's AIM screen name, or livejournal account. (See example http://nshrine.com/u/registerhere.html )
This not only eases the yet-another-name-and-password problem, but it also allows services complimentary to existing services to ease information sharing. For instance, OpenSocial functionality will be a breeze if accounts are already using an OpenSocial provider's OpenID.