Stick around. Check back soon, and all of that.

Taking cue from WordlessWednesday (which I think is very cool, but just not my thing) I thought about bloggers challenging one another in a friendly competition. Immediately, Spy Vs Spy popped into my head. But it’s not a “new” idea.

The very first blogger vs blogger, was done by a chess blogger named Dana, back in December last year. She made no claim for originating the concept, and just probably thought that it was just a cool idea. I followed suit.

“Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.” -Fight Club

Now on with the challenge.

Blogger vs Blogger

J.R. Graña accepted my challenge with Words With Friends.

Here’s how it went:

Blogger vs Blogger: Louis Pagan vs J.R. Graña

The opening was pretty standard and pretty tied up.

J.R. took a slight lead and maintained it for most of mid game.

Toward the end of the game it was pretty much neck and neck until the very last pieces.

Winner: J.R. Graña

It was a great game. We are doing another for a best 2 out of 3, but I’m getting my butt kicked due to a lack of vowels very early in the game.

For the next challenge, I think I have to dance on a typewriter or something.

This is what I thought after spending some time browsing a few blogs that I’ve read years ago, and only to find that they have not been updated for almost a year or more.

There was the occasional “we’ve moved” with a link to a new blog URL, and then there was the rare “I no longer am blogging…”  But more often than not, they left their blog (and readers) flat with no such update. Going through the links felt like when walks through an abandoned place where people use to populate without clues to where they have gone. If this was real life a call to 911 would be placed with concern of a missing person.

Don’t do this to your readership.

Proper blogger etiquette  is to inform your readers that you lost interest or incapable of  blogging. It would be nice to explain why this is so, after all your readers took the time to read your blog, and if you were lucky commented on your posts, but if you don’t want to go into detail that is fine.

My head nodded in confirmation of a few committed bloggers as it was refreshing to see them still pursuing their craft and update their blogs over the years…prevalence being a hallmark of purpose here.  I felt a wave of satisfaction finding myself fitting into this fold.

Hey, I understand that everyone has different reasons for blogging and sometimes it just may not be your thing anymore. Still, beyond blogs I think it’s the natural thing for us to do by posting one last update and saying – Adios.

Choose your weapon.
Remember Spy Vs Spy?  The zany comic strip from Mad Magazine?

Well here’s a tidbit for you – the strip was created by a Cuban exile named Antonio Prohías, who said “The sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel’s accusation of me as a spy into a moneymaking venture.”  Spy vs Spy is legendary and has since been merchandised as a video game, action figures, animation, and more.

Back to Blogging.

I’m looking for my first blogger to challenge in a contest of choice – Words with Friends, Chess, Checkers, photo contest, typing speed, Dominoes, whatever.  I’ll update this page as soon as I find a victim challenger.  If you’re interested let me know.

Update:  We have a challenger.  Updates later.

Pseudo Social Media Certifications – they don’t exist, don’t bother.

Tweaking your Social Media settings to Protect your Network – your social friends are potentially another person’s resource

Be a Content DJ – Remixing your Material – Lost for content, it may be sitting under your nose.

That last statement makes for a lot of explanation of what this blog is and how it fits into the area of Latino social media.

This site is a personal blog through and through. There is content, but I don’t consider myself an editor here in the traditional sense of the word. I started this blog but don’t consider myself a “founder.” Personally, I think it’s quite silly to use such terms when describing a personal blog.

Most topics are about social media and digital culture both in general and specific to Latinos. My thoughts are my own and are personal in nature. Some things that you may find here are commentary and examination of current trends and events, my journey in the social space, Latino social media, and some odd topics like writting, running shoes and street art. You will hardly find any entries that describe the content of my breakfeast (although sometimes I may), or rants about how bad of a day I’ve had. In that sense, my blog is semi-professional.

When something is very in depth (note: there will be a lot of that coming), I may opt to post it on larger publications like Huffington Post, Hispanicize (disclaimer: I’m a partner an Editorial director there), Technorati, or other places. But still, my blog is my personal space with no commitments or promises, and I like it that way because it maintains a human touch.

Keeping all that in mind, if you were one who wanted to keep abreast of what is new and what is going on in the Latino social media landscape I’d tell you to keep my blog on top of you’re reading list (you should go to the “In Media” section under the About for examples on why that is true), but you’ll have to put up with the occasional off-topic stuff.

Read on my friends.

Here’s a list of recent posts.   A few are particularly interesting.  Follow the flames.

I’m often asked for permission to share content from my blog on other sites. And while I appreciate that very much I remind everyone that the site is quite open to the public domain.

So, I hereby resign any previous conversations and refer you to creative commons.  Extraneous situations can be resolved w/ an email.

The next post may be a “baby” post, but I don’t have plans to turn this into a Daddy blog however. As a matter of fact, speaking about family stuff my wife just started her blog. Very exciting.

There are some other cool things to come, but you’ll have to return to read about it. I’m not spillin’ just yet.

So, here we all are…waiting. Thanks for reading. See you soon!

UPDATE 8/14/2011: Baby has arrived. More later.

Subtitle: In Business, you should not talk about Politics

The first voices in new media, before new media was called “social media” were bloggers.

Blogs are the foundation of social media as we know it today, unfortunately not too many are familiar with this fact.

What had my attention a long time ago is how the Latino political and community bloggers took an active role in addressing real issues and many times taking action (activists) centered around causes that affected their communities as well as discussed issues on a national platform.  There were also many other blogs by Latinos in other areas.

In many ways, Latino bloggers of this caliber are the grandfather’s and grandmothers of Latino social media. They constitute the first wave of Latino social media.

Over at Latino Netroots you can find a good collection of Latino Progressive Bloggers, many of which are still active today.

(Disclosure: I was very active in this area years ago, and for that matter, mMy old blog is still listed. Can you guess which one?)

There are many individual stories to be told here, maybe one day someone will document some of it.