Fitzroyalty

Hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065

Archive for the category: Social media

social media mob rule and the Astor cinema building public relations war

17 May 2013 | 15 Comments

This post is about the circumstances that resulted in a school buying, then unexpectedly selling, a cinema building within a few years, with the sale apparently driven primarily by negative public opinion expressed through social media. Like my previous posts about the business and psychology of social media, this one examines the power of social media and the perils faced by those who ignore it.

As usual, there is a disclaimer. I was working at St Michael’s Grammar School when the Astor saga occurred, developing its new website, and it would have been a conflict of interest for me to write about it at the time. …

Darryl Adams vs Melinda Tankard Reist: harassed at work for personal behaviour online

10 May 2013 | 0 comments

A man used a pseudonymous Twitter account to make a sexist comment about a woman. The woman took offence. She knew his real name. She presumably could do little to obtain a retraction or apology from him, and was dissatisfied with this. She also knew who his employer was, so she contacted them and asked them to harass him for her, and they appear to have complied.

Regardless of the tastelessness of his actions, her behaviour cannot be justified.…

media corporations don’t understand the importance of attribution to user generated content creators

29 April 2013 | 0 comments

Attribution of authorship in the reuse of copyrighted content is important because it recognises the moral rights content creators have in their work, which is basically the right to be identified as the creator of the work regardless of who is licensed to republish it.

The importance of attribution is poorly understood by the general public, as this example demonstrates, like much of copyright law. The importance of attribution is not only misunderstood, but deliberately and egregiously violated, by media corporations on a daily basis.…

a review of Melbourne local government online communications

20 March 2013 | 0 comments

In 2009 I reviewed and compared all the inner metropolitan Melbourne local government websites. I’m now going to do the same for the broader online presences for the same local governments. Some have replaced their websites in this time, and most demonstrate that they are investing more in trying to communicate with the people they represent.

Mostly, however, their communications are amateurish and well behind what may be described as best practice. One of the clearest indicators of an amateur client in web development is when they allow a developer to advertise themselves in the footer of the sites they build for clients.…

preparing for the future of web publishing

12 March 2013 | 0 comments

You may have noticed some changes to the design and information architecture of Fitzroyalty. I have been busy preparing the site for the future. The site has used a responsive Wordpress theme for over a year now, and I keep reducing the amount of content in the menus and sidebars. I’m still working on the information architecture, but the overall experience should now be as good on a phone as on a desktop computer.

An exception to this that is beyond my control is the embedding of Vimeo videos, which basically don’t work.…

corresponding with the City of Moreland

26 February 2013 | 16 Comments

On Monday 18 February I published a post titled ‘the City of Moreland has falsely accused me of defamation‘. It described the City of Moreland’s response to my previous criticism, published on 13 February, of their mismanagement of the recruitment process for a role I applied for. On 15 February, the City of Moreland responded to my first post by accusing me of defamation.

I emailed each councillor at 12.17am to inform them of my articles, to suggest that their accusation of defamation was not supported by the evidence, and to request that they apologise to me for making the unsubstantiated allegation.…

breakfast at Hammer and Tong on Westgarth St

15 February 2013 | 6 Comments

Hammer and Tong is a new daytime cafe on Westgarth St located in the space of the former Brix restaurant that opened on 11 February. Like Bar Paradiso on Greeves St, which took over the space of the former Felice’s, Hammer and Tong has not wasted money removing an excellent existing fitout and replacing it with something else. It seems to have done only a minor refresh.

Instead they have moved in and started trading, which is smart.…

guilt trip entrepreneurship

17 November 2012 | 1 Comment

This is an email I received received recently from some freeloading entrepreneur, followed by my response. When will they learn that false flattery does not impress me?

I would firstly like to say I really like your blog / website and I think you are doing an amazing job at revealing Melbourne’s hidden gems. I have noticed that you look specifically in Fitzroy however I am working with a Melbourne / Geelong artist at the moment who has a few galleries around Australia and I was wondering if you could possible have a look at the site / blog / artwork and give me some feedback.

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