Friday, September 23, 2011

I was able to investigate Facebook’s new Timeline feature first-hand last night.  What I saw of it, I liked.  Take a listen!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Credit: Free photos from acobox.com

  If you’re keeping track of the many social networks that are available, you’ll notice that there are quite a few of them out there…putting it mildly. For the people that want to be involved in as many communities as they can, managing all of the connections, conversations, and properties can feel somewhat overwhelming.

Social Housekeeping.
Personally, I’m involved on more than my fair share of networks. Twitter and Facebook are my two main areas of focus, but I’ve also made an effort to do more with LinkedIn and was one of the many clamoring to jump onto Google+ when it was announced.  It wasn’t long after I was granted a Google+ invite (thanks Steve) that I felt a true, overwhelming sense of stress with regards to my online communities.  There were simply too many (or I had too many irons in the fire). 

After that thought entered my mind, I felt myself pulling back from not just G+ but all of my networks. I didn’t post as often and I didn’t engage as often. It was nice…for a while. After a few days I missed the interaction and came to the conclusion that I couldn’t just abandon the online properties that I had once been inhabiting. That wasn’t fair, not to myself or to the people that I’d gotten to know (and appreciate) within each of the communities. I started to look at each social network location as a house or a proerty that I had to maintain. Each property was in a different community with different neighbors and different rules.

Managing and defining each location.
As much as I dislike the term “managing your social network” I realize that this is a necessary task for those involved in social networking. From the outside looking in, it may be easy to suggest dropping one or more networks and only focus on those that give the most joy and are the most worthwhile to your time. Personally speaking, that didn’t seem like the appropriate response.

Turning toward tools when running out of time.
While I’ve used these tools for a while, I find myself relying on them now more than ever to help me stay up-to-date with my communities and not let things slip too far behind.

• Hootsuite - Managing multiple social networks from within your browser.
• Tweetdeck - Manage multiple networks in mobile and desktop apps.
• Boxcar - Mobile notifications for iOS and beyond
• Firefox 5 (and 6) with “Tab pinning”
• Google+ Mobile Apps

How do you keep your social properties in order?
What tricks or tips do you have to stay on top of all of these networks (while not ignoring anyone)?  What tools do you use and how do you use them to manage your time as well as your relationships?

Monday, July 04, 2011

My wife and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to technology.  I’m the geek of the house, constantly searching for new gadgets and ways to automate and digitize life.  Lisa, on the other hand, doesn’t care what the iPad 2 can/can’t do nor does she want to see one in our house.  She prefers CDs to iTunes downloads and cringed when I set up the lights in our first apartment to run via remote control (thank you X-10!).  However, there is one area of our digital lives that meets an intersection.

Lisa started playing the Facebook game Zoo World in late 2009.  Much like Farmville, Zoo World is an online, social game that involves maintaining a venue, caring for animals and designing and interacting with others to reach achievements and “level up”.  In January 2010 she had foot surgery and was relegated to couch duty for well over a month.  I bought her a netbook so she could stay connected to her fellow Zoo World friends during her recovery.

When Spring rolled around, my wife had amassed a large number of Zoo Friends on Facebook and had developed relationships with them outside of the game.  They’d chat about everyday items in between ZW discussions.  She’d created an amazing community of friends that would soon prove to be invaluable.

Box Tops for Education
It was also around that time that we began attending re-enrollment meetings at our school for our oldest son who was starting 4K that Fall.  In one of the many information packets we brought home was a flyer for a back-to-school Box Tops for Education contest.  Knowing how competitive and driven my wife is, I knew our son had a fair shot at winning this contest.  Little did I know how much and how quickly these little pieces of cardboard would become a part of our life.

As the start of the school year approached, my wife would update me on our current Box Top count.  I became increasingly interested when she said that her Facebook friends were chipping in and mailing tops to us.  Besting that feeling of amazement was the fact that these friends were located all over the world.  We were getting people offering to help our son’s school from as far away as Canada and Great Britain.  That was amazing.  That was community.  That was real.

Further proof that social “works”.
While I had doubted her initial involvement in Zoo World, I have always believed in the power of social networking.  The connections that I’ve been able to make have proved that to myself, but seeing someone else have such an amazing result added more fuel to the fire. 

At the end of the school year, our son’s school ended up with over 80,000 Box Tops for Education, of which some 8,000 came from our son and his social networking supporters.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

In the past. when I’ve asked people if they’re on Twitter (and then tell people that I tweet), I’d get a mixed bag of reactions.  More often than not, I’d get one (or a combination) of these responses: rolling of the eyes, an exasperated sign, an “Oh…” followed by a remark about how they “don’t get Twitter” or how “that’s just a waste of time”, “why would anyone want to read about my day”, “I don’t want to read about what some guy had for lunch…”, etc.  Fun stuff.  I would have probably been accepted with more warmth if I said I liked to lick peanut butter off of roof shingles in the middle of the night.  Seriously.

Over the past year, responses like these have lessened, mainly due to Twitter’s growing mainstream popularity and the fact that more people have tried it out for themselves and have discovered it’s not as pointless as they once thought.  Still, there are some that remain skeptics.  That’s ok, we need skepticism in this world.  We also need a little acceptance.

Twitter is much more than an outlet for you to share what you ate for breakfast.  It’s a complex and layered. A system of communicating, listening, interacting, and most importantly finding people that are like-minded.  From there, you let the conversations take over and the ideas run free and see what kind of results you get.

See for yourself.
If you’ve been on the fence about Twitter (or social networking as a whole), why not check it out or at the very least, give it a chance.  You might be surprised by what you find.

Sign up for an account.  If you haven’t done this yet, take the leap and sign up.  Make sure you add your bio.  This is an important piece in letting people know what you’re about.  It’s more-often-than-not the first impression that someone will have of you on Twitter, so you want to make it count.

Who to follow.
Twitter is more enjoyable if you follow other people and there are plenty of places to find folks that are like-minded and share the same interests that you have.  Below are some places you can start your search.

• Twitter Search
• Twellow.com
• Tweepi.com
• Klout (to find folks with influence)

By the way, I hear this @Tiglu guy is pretty cool. You should check him out. (It’s true, I have no shame.)

Search
Speaking of search, this may be one of the greatest resources available through Twitter.  Use it to locate people that are not only interested in the same activities and topics that you are but also find people that are actively conversing.  How many people you follow us up to you.  I suggest keeping the list manageable at first and then expand and follow people back as they follow you (if they seem like a good fit).

Engage!
Don’t be afraid to comment on a post or jump into a conversation.  Breaking the ice in chat form is often easier to do as opposed to face to face meet ups and can help cement the building blocks of the relationships you could possibly make.

Share
Another beauty of Twitter is the ability to not only share articles, pictures, video, anything that you find interesting in your own tweets, but you can also retweet other people’s tweets and help spread their messages.  It’s a great way to comment or give your approval/appreciation and, again, is a great way to break the ice and start conversations.

Keep the conversation going.
While the elements of social networking are simple, there is work that needs to be done to maintain relationships and continue growing them.

It’s up to you.
Ultimately, your success with Twitter falls back on how you use it, which is entirely up to you.  If you want to use it as a sounding board for your own thoughts and don’t want to get into the back and forth conversation, that’s fine.  If you want to lurk and read what other people are saying and doing, well that’s fine too, but through my own use and experience, the Twitter experience is much more worthwhile when you’ve got friends and connections to share with.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

I recently joined a new social networking site that is more of game/social media ego stroke than anything, but it’s caused me to spend more time on the various social connections that I take part in.  Welcome to Empire Avenue, a social media stock exchange.

With Empire Avenue, which actually launched last year, you’re rewarded by your contributions to your networks.  Each tweet, post, like, comment, all factor into your share price along with other aspects of your social persona.  As with any good social game, you receive rewards and badges for specific achievements (such as being mentioned on Twitter, posting amounts in a given span of time, etc).  The core of the game thought, is the ability to invest in your friends and in brands that you follow.  The currency used is the “Eave”, which you’ll both earn and spend when buying selling your social stock.

Some observations.
I’m not a (big) player of the traditional stock market, so I wasn’t sure how I’d be impacted by Empire Ave.  Much to my surprise, the way the reward system works has made me post more since signing up while being mindful of over-sharing.  No gameplay should be worth the price of losing followers.

I’ve also noticed other people that participate in Empire Avenue have stepped up their posting habits as well.  Whether or not this trend stays the course will be worth watching.  And I’m not complaining about this either.  The more content I can see from the people that I follow and friend, the better!

Get your shares in Tiglu!
If you’ve become involved in this network, I invite you to check out my profile and purchase some shares (if you’re so moved).