Here’s a cool map based on over 210 million Facebook profiles (h/t: Jason Rentfrow). Compiled by Pete Warden, it plots the connections between places that share Facebook friends. The map divides the U.S. into seven distinct locational clusters with names like “Stayathomia,”  “Mormonia,” and “Socalistan.” More here.

Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, announced his resignation via Twitter, deploying haiku to boot. His message:

Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more

This illustrated his frustration surrounding the acquisition by Oracle.

Normally, I recommend (especially to young people) to resist the urge to be cheeky and keep it to the point and be professional. This article suggests that Conan O’Brien should have been more diplomatic, although his détente final words may have cleared things up.

What was your most creative quitting story? What quitting fantasies have you had?

Launched today – the new Richard Florida fan page on Facebook!

Come join our growing community and get all the updates about Richard, his books, events, blog posts, and more in one of your favorite social networking locations.

Last weekend, we went to a benefit for Mercy Corps relief work in Haiti in a small theater. It was an eclectic all-star cast – Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes from Pink Martini, singer/actress Storm Large, the hip hop/rapper Cool Nutz, jazz artists Janice Scroggins and Linda Hornbuckle, and others. It was impromptu, put together in six days but sold out. We sat toward the back and when I looked out what I saw were grey and bald heads, the average age was probably 50+. But in other venues, all of these performers draw big young crowds. Tickets were $30, so price wasn’t a major barrier.

It made me remember that the previous weekend we went to a staged reading of a play by a small, semi-experimental theater company and again the audience was geezers (me included).

So I’m wondering, is there an age cultural divide in venues? It doesn’t surprise me to see mostly older folks at classical events, but these are the kind of things I went to in my 20’s. Richard wrote in Rise about the creative class’ move toward experiential entertainment. If the benefit had been in a dance venue would the crowd have been different? And if there were a DVD made of the play or it were posted on YouTube, would it get a younger audience?

I’m curious what you do when you go out, or for that matter do at home for entertainment with your computer. Do younger folks need to either experience things only virtually or viscerally? Is theater seating going the way of the print media? What does this mean for American culture?

The one and only Yoko Ono (@yokoono) is now following Richard on Twitter.

Become privy to Richard’s thought-provoking Tweets today: @Richard_Florida.

Who are your favorite folks to follow on Twitter?

Every year, Computerworld asks people in the geek community for their New Year’s predictions. The full article is here.

My responses included:

We will see social networking fatigue, but savvy users will continue to use platforms to build their personal brands. For most people, updating Facebook gets tedious, and your “friends” really don’t care which Hogwarts faculty member you are. Twitter takes a lot of work, although it can be a great personal brand-builder, with enough effort. LinkedIn is improving, mostly because of its Answers section; users can become well-regarded authorities in their subject areas by investing an hour or two per week posting thoughtful questions and responses. Plaxo? Please stop pestering me. You’re too far down my social networking depth chart for me to spend any time with you.

And

While the concept of a social networking guru might seem quaint by 2013 (do you have a photocopier guru in your office?), there is an opportunity in 2010 for people who really understand how to make social networking happen within the enterprise. While there are still a lot of carpetbaggers and “gee-whiz” cheerleaders playing in this market, I still find that there are a lot of people who don’t have a basic understanding of social networking and are reluctant to ask for help.

What are your thoughts? What will 2010 have in store for social networking?

This season is always weird for me. I was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian, so Christmas is something that we do, but I was also brought up through the late 80s and early 90s when black nationalist rap was shaping my consciousness, and back then A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, and the Poor Righteous Teachers were empowering us to overthrow the tyranny of the Christian calendar, much to my mother’s chagrin. It’s been easy for us to keep the peace though. While Wikipedia tells us that the Christians may have borrowed the date from that Roman party animal of the cosmos, Saturn, I’m not so mad about it that I can’t enjoy the feasting. Plus my contrarian position means that no one really has to buy me anything, and I don’t really expect anything. This is convenient because my years as DJ/student didn’t often leave me with much at the end of the year. There usually isn’t much that I really want anyways. Fellowship is its own reward.

But this year is different. And no, the nature of fellowship hasn’t changed. What has changed however, is your favorite writer’s favorite notebook. And I want one. For me and, moreover, for Ottawa. Thank the good people at Moleskine (from the MoleskineCity page):

This area is dedicated to the city and to urban life, to travelers and residents, to independent and free-thinking people.

MoleskineCity is associated with City Notebooks, the first guide you write yourself.

Each city includes a page where you can find basic information, updates and curious facts.

Here you can organize your trip or your own personal way of experiencing the city, your own paths and interests.

Dare I say that in the coldest capital city in the world, this pretty much melted my face on sight. I mean, not only am I currently engaged in the process of putting together a cultural mapping process, but I LOVE Moleskines and have for years. I’ve been charting my progress on this process in my Moleskine. (Recently I graduated to the Plain Reporter Pocket Notebook from the Plain Pocket Notebook and there’s no going back, but that’s neither here nor there.) It’s amazing how Moleskine is focusing on the city and on facilitating a deeper engagement with it by offering a bit of cultural and spatial context and letting you fill in the rest. On beautiful acid-free paper and bound in the finest leather to boot. There are very cool informatic implications if they could somehow digitize the process, but it’s almost cooler that things remain analog. And they’ve started with some pretty interesting cities. But where’s Ottawa? How does a city get onto this list?!

If there was a Santa, he’d figure out a way to get Canada’s capital in the next round of Moleskine Cities!! Or maybe I have to ask that other guy…

And now, with all the greetings of the season, some music.

Happy Holidays!

My friend Neil is one of the best bloggers in the business. 1000awesomethings.com is a bright, positive light among millions of angst-filled rantfests littering the blogosphere. One of the site’s reviewer’s summarizes the project nicely:

“There’s something riveting about 1000 Awesome Things that makes you want to keep coming back. Aside from the great humor, it reminds you of the little things in life, and how awesome they can be.”

The blog is a sensation. It has received more than eight million hits, won a Webby, and earned the author a book deal. The fact that it is so positive makes last week’s incident even more unusual. In November, there was an entry for “really, really, tall people” that was well-received. A follow-up post on “really, really short people” was not. It offended people.

Some of the comments (note: some are gently edited for typos) were nasty…

What’s next, a post about how awesome disabled people are because they get to ride around in wheelchairs all day long, or a post about how cool retarded kids are because they get to wear those bitching helmets? You, my friend, are a mental MIDGET; your humor is SMALL-minded; and your capacity for empathy is STUNTED. In sum, you need to GROW up.

Others were thoughtful …

I’m agreeing with the people who have a bit of a qualm with this post. While it doesn’t offend me, it really doesn’t leave me feeling good either, as it seems like you just point out all the negatives about being short. What’s awesome about that? I really think this could’ve been written a bit differently in order to actually seem positive. Right now, it’s just a serious bummer.

I wondered if the author was going to respond with an apology, a clarification, or an entry about “people that don’t get the joke are still awesome.” Instead, he let the community speak. Some of the readers that came to his defense:

• Wow. I think it’s funny that people are offended by this so much more than the Tall People post, which is almost exactly the same format. Napoleon Syndrome much, guys?
• 5′ here and in total agreement with this post: I am awesome! Not reaching stuff, failed volleyball dreams and the concerts are all problems, but the pros outweight the cons! Being short is a great way to meet people since we’re constantly asking strangers to grab stuff off the top shelf. Also at airports some kindly person will always volunteer to grab my luggage off the tram thing when they see me struggling to reach! Basically being short is a lifetime of people not expecting much of you physical-labour wise, awesome!
• It’s human nature to classify ourselves using extremes. If we’re not one, then our mind tells us that we’re the other.  With that in mind, if you’re not hitting your head on the doorframe every time you enter a building, then chances are you were thinking of yourself when you read this post. If that’s true, and you haven’t read the really, really tall people post (which was written to be identical to this one), then you might have thought Neil was nineteen feet tall, and an insensitive jerkwad to boot. If we think for about three seconds, all of us can come up with something that we’d like to change about ourselves that we can’t. For some people, being really, really short, or really, really tall is their thing. We all have our own crosses to bear. The message here is that we all have things that make us unique, and while we may wish we could change some of those things, sometimes we can’t. We are who we are, and life gives us the privilege of embracing our individuality and having our own go at the world.  That’s pretty awesome in my book.

If someone doesn’t get your joke on the blogosphere, is it better to explain or let the readers speak for you?

There were some interesting comments on my last Creative Class post about the value of one’s social media presence and possible positive and negative effects on a career. One of the readers suggested that having two Twitter accounts makes sense – one that publishes professional material and the other is more personal and restricted to family and close friends.

When I deliver speeches on social media, I often explain the difference between social media platforms in terms of your closet. LinkedIn is a grey flannel suit and Facebook is a Hawaiian shirt. It’s important to have both, but if you show up in a boardroom in a Hawaiian shirt you look like a goof and if you show up on a boathouse roof in a grey flannel suit, you look like an ass. As a side note, several people have pointed out that often the guy wearing a bright floral shirt in a boardroom often owns the place, but that might be the exception that proves the rule.

Generally, LinkedIn should have the reserved, dignified tone of a resume but with fewer restrictions on format and length. Good profiles provide lots of search terms and plenty of recommendations. Although my personal profile might have gone too far in this respect. Beyond 50 recommendations takes someone a few exits past “let’s hire this guy”  and is careening towards “desperately insecure attention seeker”-ville.

Facebook allows more leeway for frivolity in the form of cheeky update status, personal photos, and non-business links (although, trust me… people aren’t interested in what Hogwarts faculty member you are). There are some downsides to inviting colleagues as Facebook friends. For example:

• Violating work-life separation.
• Constantly have to monitor content to make sure others aren’t tagging you in the vacation pictures you don’t want the guy in accounts receivable to see.
• Appearances of favoritism – why did my boss friend my colleagues and not me?
• “Banter competition” – if Facebook walls become the water cooler, am I putting myself at a disadvantage by not showing up?
• Offending people (maybe a customer or your boss) by not accepting them or putting them on limited profile (if they are paying attention, it’s easy to tell).

What are your guidelines for friending colleagues?

Andy Warhol’s famous 1968 quote, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” has not yet come true, but the spirit of it is manifested in the world of cyberspace. At least everyone has the opportunity and the platform to become world-famous.

The United Breaks Guitars phenomenon is well-documented. The main story is that  a clever video with outstanding production value even though it was created on a shoestring describes how a checked guitar belonging to Dave Carroll was broken by baggage handlers. The video has been viewed almost six million times and the Sons of Maxwell have been elevated from a talented but relatively unknown band into a much bigger deal. The song itself reached #1 on the Country and Western charts in the U.K., iTunes sales skyrocketed and, yes, the guitar situation was finally resolved.

But, you probably already knew about the Taylor Guitar if you spend a lot of time online. The oeuvre of jrdmovimkr, an artist that makes fantastic stop-motion videos may have slipped your attention. His medium? Lego. Have a look at his work in this video – a shot-by-shot tribute to “White and Nerdy” by Weird Al Yankovic.  jrdmovimkr’s work has been viewed more than 3.4 million times.

Success on YouTube for witty self-created videos isn’t political or dependent on how rich, connected, or good-looking the author is – it is a complete meritocracy. If your work is clever and entertaining, it will gain acclaim and you will be famous, at least in the online world, and probably for more than 15 minutes.

You can ask the creators of the Potter Puppet Pals. Their most popular video has been viewed more than 70 million times. Seventy million people, by the way, would be enough to be the 15th most-populous country in the world.