Tag Archives: Social media

Don’t Lie, Don’t Pry Don’t Cheat, Can’t Delete Don’t Steal, Don’t Reveal These are very simple, easy-to-remember guidelines for using social networks without getting yourself into hot water. Although intended for health care workers, they apply to all of us. … Continue reading →

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Posted on May 18, 2012

Some thoughts on the crowded field of social networks…

Posted on April 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

Brief aside: I see Google+ is rolling out a new look today. It might be a good time to check out the network, if you haven’t already. I’m on Google+ here and I follow a lot of interesting people.

I think it’s a false proposition to look for one clear winner among the big-player social networks, the one network that will destroy all the others. Yet this is what many tech and social media bloggers persist in trying to do, as if the social web were a horse race that at some point will clearly be over, instead of a place that is constantly evolving and growing.

There is room for many kinds of networks on the social web because the primary job of these networks is to connect people, and there are many types of people. No one network can be all things to all people, nor should it try to be. For instance, Google+ seems to appeal more to introverted types (like me; full disclosure), while Facebook attracts more extroverts. Pinterest is geared toward people who think visually; Twitter is for those who prefer a rapid-fire flow of information.

Not only do different types of networks work better for different types of people, but no one of us fits into a neatly labeled box all of the time. That’s why many of us like to move between networks as our needs dictate, even though we may have one primary place where we hang out most of the time. I definitely prefer Google+ for most sharing, but Twitter is a good place to exchange links or read breaking news, and on Facebook, I can keep up with an extended circle of friends and family.

So I don’t see much point in the endless articles dissecting why Google+ has so many followers as compared to Facebook, or what people think of Twitter or Pinterest. In this space, there is room for multiple winners. Still, blogs don’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and blogs must be filled with content, so I’m sure we’ll continue to be inundated with these meaningless pieces pitting the social networks against one another or lauding the latest newcomer as the giant killer.

As long as a network has a strong idea of its own identity and remembers who its primary user base is — and doesn’t stray too far afield of that by trying to be all possible things to all possible users — it can probably survive and even thrive in this crowded space. Until the social web is supplanted by something utterly new and unpredictable, that is.

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Don’t Let Technology Hurdles Crush Inspiration

Posted on March 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

“It’s so easy for technology to squash inspiration.”

This is so true. If you want people in your organization to share more, you can’t dictate to them how to share or what tools to use. That just clamps down on the natural tendency to connect and share, in a spontaneous, organic way.

People think and communicate in different ways. With the interconnectedness of everything social on the Internet, there’s no reason why they can’t use the method that’s most comfortable for them.

Look at how all the social networks appeal to different types of communicators. Google+ is for people who like to write out their thoughts. Twitter is for folks who prefer sharing quick snippets. Facebook appeals more to social extroverts. Pinterest has a visual appeal. And so on. No network is the one right way to communicate. That’s why they can all find space to exist.

And I guess some people still like using old-fashioned email to share and communicate. That’s okay too. What these folks need is an enabler, someone who really gets all the technologies and can set up means to make it easy for them to share, using the tools they are most comfortable with. Perhaps that’s what the “social media expert” will evolve into…

Here’s the piece that inspired these thoughts – Wild Apricot Blog : Don’t Let Technology Hurdles Crush Inspiration.

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How to search your old Tweets + Twitter spring cleaning tips

Posted on April 26, 2010 | 3 Comments

I recently had a question: How do I search my own tweets for an old link I might need or a great quip I had made? The problem with Twitter‘s search tool is that it’s time-limited. You can search your tweets by prefacing the search keyword with your Twitter username, but the search results will only go back a week or so. This is a pretty serious limitation of Twitter’s search functionality.

It turns out there is no good tool for searching your past archive of all tweets. Google will search tweets, but it’s not at all easy to limit that search to just your own tweets.

The best solution I’ve found requires a little forethought. First, you have to archive your tweets in a searchable location. I use FriendFeed, which also archives my Delicious bookmarks, StumbleUpon finds and blog posts. Here are some other places where you can archive your tweets.

If you start the archive now, it won’t be much help in finding tweets from 6 months ago, but at least you will have a searchable archive going forward. However, if you already have a FriendFeed account or similar Twitter archive, you can use the search tool there to search through your past tweets. I use FriendFeed’s advanced search, so I can limit the search to just my feed by entering my username in the “Specific friends/groups” box.

If you just want to search links, BackTweets may help. It enables you to search links posted on Twitter, and it expands shortened links. Unfortunately, you can’t search only your own Twitter account.

A better solution is to archive your tweeted links on a searchable platform. Packrati.us fills the void. It automatically archives every link you tweet to your Delicious bookmarks. It will even tag the link with each hashtag you add to the tweet. This has been a real timesaver for me, because I like to share useful tweets on Twitter and then save them on Delicious, which used to be a two-step process.

Speaking of Twitter, now might be a good time to spring-clean your Twitter account. I just went through my followers list so I could block questionable followers and make sure I was following back the interesting people. I also cleaned up my Twitter lists. Mashable suggests some good tools to help.

The best tool on the list, I thought, was UnTweeps. This tool finds all of the people you’re following who haven’t tweeted in a while (30 days or more) and lets you quickly unfollow them. Twitter Karma also seems like a cool tool. It shows who you’re following and who’s following you back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work for me yet; it depends on how busy Twitter is when you run it.

10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets (ReadWriteWeb)
FriendFeed
BackTweets
Packrati.us
How to: Spring-clean Your Twitter Account (Mashable)
UnTweeps
Twitter Karma
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Like everyone else, I have an opinion about Google Buzz…

Posted on February 11, 2010 | 4 Comments

Google launched Google Buzz, its social media application for Gmail, over the last couple of days, and everyone on the web has an opinion, including me. Some opinions are unnecessarily hostile for a new software application. The social web is a very friendly place for the knee-jerk reaction.

After using Buzz for a little while, I have decided that I mostly like it. Here’s why.

Most people are comparing Buzz to Facebook and Twitter. Buzz does a lot of the good things Facebook does, only much, much better. The interface is cleaner and easier to use. So far, I have not had to worry about catching spam, malware or viruses from Buzz, and it avoids all the inanities of Facebook. The commenting and like features are super-easy to use; the privacy features take a little more figuring out (especially if you don’t use Gmail’s Groups feature), but not much, and they are also easier and more versatile than Facebook’s, as far as I can tell. The integration with Google Reader is especially powerful, and I would like to see that strengthened over time, particularly so that I don’t have to read everyone’s shared items twice.

I like that Buzz lets me communicate very easily with people I email a lot, particularly friends and family. It’s great for quick, asynchronous chat sessions that I would normally carry on over email. I like to see what my friends are reading on the web and quickly comment on them. I would close my Facebook account today and only use Buzz if there weren’t so many people on Facebook who I want to stay in touch with and who seem unlikely to move. Regardless, I think I will be visiting Facebook even less in the future.

Buzz is not a competitor with Twitter, though. It does not even try to do the things that Twitter does well. I use Twitter to find news, links and trends. It’s basically my window on the social web. I like it because I can drop in when I have time and ignore it when I don’t. I would never try to follow high-volume posters like Mashable or the New York Times on Buzz. That would quickly get overwhelming.

Also, my audience on Twitter is very different. It is larger and made up mostly of people who don’t know me, who I assume are more interested in specific topics I frequently write about and post links on. So I will continue to use Buzz and Twitter as complementary networks, rather than try to replace one with the other.

I suspect that Google knows this and that is why they let you feed your Twitter content into Buzz. I disconnected my Twitter feed from Buzz, though. There is too much possibility for redundancy, and besides, I tweet a lot. I don’t want to overwhelm the people following me on Buzz with too much noise. I also didn’t connect my FriendFeed to Buzz for the same reasons.

Some people are concerned about the privacy of Buzz. These people didn’t take a few minutes just to learn the software before getting all upset about it, I suspect. You can turn Buzz off — look for the link at the bottom of the page. You can block people from following you. You can make your posts private. Buzz launches with suggestions for people to follow culled from your email and chat contacts and people you’re sharing with on Reader, but you don’t have to follow any of them.

The biggest concern may be that Buzz posts the list of people you’re following and people following you on your Google Profile page. This is no different from what Twitter does, but it’s a bit more personal, since these people are also your email contacts. It is very easy to turn this public display off, which I did straightaway. Just go to your Google Profile page (click your name in Buzz), click Edit Settings and then uncheck the box beside “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.”

So you can choose to follow me on Buzz (via my Google Profile) or on Twitter or both. I post more to Twitter and it’s more impersonal but possibly more interesting. But on Buzz we can have conversations about the links I share. Both have value. Where you likely won’t see much of me anymore is Facebook. I don’t think I’ll miss it.

More opinions and help with Buzz:

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Getting active (politically) using social media

Posted on August 27, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ok, it may not be as impactful or as meaningful as marching on Washington or staging a sit-in, but if you’re using social media anyway, there are lots of ways to use it to make your political views known or to try to do some good in the world. Futurismic calls it “micro-volunteering”: using social media tools to do some good on your down time. Mashable is running a program called the Summer of Social Good, using social networking tools to raise money for worthwhile causes.

Here are some causes I like that you might want to join:

Once you’ve picked your cause, head over to Twibbon to display a ribbon proudly on your Twitter avatar.

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My social media world

Posted on May 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

This past weekend I joined Facebook, and now my social media world is so complex and intertwined that it makes my head hurt. To help me make sense of it all, I drew this map:

My social media map

My social media map

(I used bubbl.us, which is a really intuitive, easy-to-use, free mind-mapping tool.)

This doesn’t show all my social media sites, just the ones I use most regularly. But it did help me organize my social media efforts, at least in my own head. The black lines show everything that feeds into FriendFeed, which is my nexus and the most complete view of what I’m doing online. The gray lines show which services are being automagically updated by which other services, usually via an RSS feed or FriendFeed’s automatic output to Twitter.

I organized my social media universe into four quadrants. My home quadrant (tan) — my blogs but also my Google Profile – are my home bases on the Web and also where the world finds me. My networks quadrant (green) have organized quite naturally into a professional network that I use only occasionally (LinkedIn), a network of friends and family I know in real life (Facebook) and an online network with many overlaps with the other two networks that I use most frequently and is the largest (Twitter).

My links quadrant (purple) are my tools for collecting and sharing links. I read blog posts and other articles via RSS feed in Google Reader every day, and share interesting finds out to my network. Delicious is where I permanently store links and do research. StumbleUpon is more of a historical record of links I’ve blogged about, plus a lot of random fun stuff I discover while surfing the web.

Finally, there are miscellaneous tools that reflect my hobbies in the pink quadrant. I’m an avid reader, so I have several tools for organizing and recording my reading and books (LibraryThing, Lists of Bests, All Consuming), which feed back to my books blog and sometimes Twitter. I also use tools to track my goals (43 Things) and travel (43 Places), and to upload my photos (Flickr).

Of course, not everything is on here. I didn’t include really miscellaneous places like my Amazon Wishlist or Bookmooch, or places I rarely visit like Digg or Technorati. But it is nice being able to visualize my little online universe and my place within it.

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New social media integration in popular Web 2.0 tools

Posted on November 3, 2008 | Leave a comment
Image representing Google Alerts as depicted i...

Image via CrunchBase

There has been a flurry of improvements in integrating social media tools lately, which I wanted to tell you about. I’ve tried all of these new features. They all work great and offer a lot of value to users, particularly if you use more than one Web 2.0 tool.

First, if you use Google Alerts, you’ll see that they now support RSS feeds. No more having to clutter up your email inbox with alerts. Instead, you can read them at your leisure in your favorite RSS feed reader. But the RSS feed integration also makes it possible to integrate Google alerts into any application that can read and display the feeds, such as FriendFeed or your blog. Go to the Manage Your Alerts page to switch your alerts from email to RSS.

Second, LinkedIn profiles now support a lot of Web 2.0 tools, including WordPress and SlideShare. I’ve modified my LinkedIn profile to show the latest posts from this blog, for instance. It’s very easy to do; open your profile and click Add Application. These new features give you a lot of options for showing your professional network what you’re doing and helping them learn more about you.

There were some other applications that I haven’t tried but looked to be helpful if you use LinkedIn as a platform for browsing the Web and managing your Web content. For instance, you can create a reading list via Amazon and then get recommendations on similar books based on what your colleagues are reading. You can also monitor twittering about your organization or other keywords. There’s a lot of new stuff to explore, so if you haven’t dropped by LinkedIn lately, I think it’s worth a return visit.

Finally, FriendFeed has introduced backward integration with Twitter, so you can automatically tweet items from your FriendFeed. Fortunately, you can limit it to any one or more of the services in your FriendFeed, so you can choose not to tweet every Delicious bookmark or Netflix addition. But you can tweet your new blog posts, for example, without any extra effort on your part, which is what I am now doing. See this post to learn more.

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The social media bandwagon…

Posted on March 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

With blogs and online communities sweeping the web, every organization wants to jump on the social media bandwagon. While I think social media tools can provide easy ways for organizations to get their message out and connect with people, they shouldn’t be too quick to dive in–not before they know what they’re getting into.

Here is a brief definition of social media from Wikipedia (a social media tool):

Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.

The popularity of “Web 2.0″ destinations like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, plus the explosion of blogs, has taken off for a few simple reasons:

  • People find them fun and are willing to spend a lot of free time on these sites.
  • People are using them to connect with others like them, fulfilling a basic human need (and putting the “social” into social media).
  • These tools are relatively easy to start using, with very little help and training, even for non-techies.

Once organizations–whether companies, nonprofits or other self promoters–start getting into the act, it’s too easy for the fun and social parts to be taken out of the equation. Organizations like to control their message and their content, whereas social media tools thrive on openness. And organizations have a vested interest in promoting themselves rather than having fun with the tools. Once commercialization or PR efforts are suspected, it’s probably a big turnoff for many participants.

I would advise any organization wanting to take advantage of the popularity, ease of use and low cost of social media tools to tread carefully. It’s important that the employees assigned to this are already using these tools personally and are very familiar with the communities and their (often) unwritten rules of interaction. The organization needs to provide something of value to the community, something that the intended audience will naturally respond to and want to participate in; blatant commercialism or self promotion must be avoided. Finally, these efforts take time. It’s best to lurk, listen and learn before diving in.

Here are some good resources for organizations that are looking to capitalize on the social media phenomenon:

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What are blogs? And how can we use them? Resources list

Posted on December 17, 2007 | 6 Comments

This is a list of resources I have collected to supplement a presentation I’m giving at work on the subjects: what are blogs, how can our nonprofit blog effectively, and what is Web 2.0 anyway? These resources include many of the examples in the actual presentation as well as supplementary reading materials.

View the presentation

About Web 2.0

Blogging Tools

Nonprofit Blogs

Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

Into Web 2.0

  • Tumblr – microblogging site
  • Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
  • del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
  • Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
  • Digg – read and vote on web content
  • NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
  • Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
  • YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
  • SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
  • Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
  • Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
  • Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
  • LinkedIn – professional networking site
  • Dogster – social networking site for dogs
  • Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
  • IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest
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Posted in Notebook

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