Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
#RLToo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 20:43Yesterday, I heard from a friend about a talk given in Canada about "reality". An online video provided me the opportunity to listen to the talk as well. Later, I told some friends about this, and got into a few different discussions about the talk.
The key point of the talk is that reality is reality, whether or not it is mediated via internet communications technology. I really am sitting on a couch writing about the talk and others really will read this blog post about the talk, or at least I hope they will.
The starting point was to encourage people to stop talking about "in real life" as if our lives when we are communicating via the internet isn't real. For many, this may be a new idea, but it is one that I often spoke about in text based "virtual worlds" over a decade ago, and it was good to see this discussion go a bit more mainstream.
And, the discussion has continued, some of it as I spoke with friends face to face (a phrase I like much better than "in real life"), and some of it as I spoke with friends over Facebook. I haven't spoken with anyone about it over the telephone, but I think it is useful to think about talking with people over Facebook as being very similar to talking with people over the telephone. In both cases, what we are saying is converted into electrical signals which get converted back to the message at some other location.
In the talk, @awsamuels talks about understanding that just as you are a real person, communicating online, so are the people you are communicating with. She suggests finding pictures of the people you are communicating with online, and having those pictures up on our screen as you write. This will make you more empathetic.
This presents a problem for bloggers. I don't know who I am writing for. There are a few tools that I like to use which help me do this. On my sidebar, you will see a Google Friend Connect widget. It has images for 347 (at present) of the people who have joined this blog. It also shows images of those that have recently visited it. I've used tools like this for a long time. MyBlogLog was one of the first that I used, and is no more. BlogCatalog is supposed to show recent visitors, but hasn't updated over the past four months, so I'll probably take down their widget. TwitterRemote provides similar functionality, as well as the ability for people to tweet when they visit the site and BlogFrog is still providing information about recent visitors.
Like Google Friend Connect, there is also the NetworkedBlogs widget which shows people who have followed the blog, mostly through Facebook, and there is another widget showing who has interacted with the blog via Facebook.
All of these are tools to help make the real experiences online more meaningful and I hope that if you visit my blog, you'll somehow let me know. Join the blog with Google Friend Connect. Follow the blog on NetworkedBlogs. Login with TwitterRemote. Or simply leave a comment.
Help me know that my readers are real.
#ff @triberr @ChrisVoss @kevnetik @thetechemom @garthobrien @catalystpart @winestyleliving @TheWebKaiser @SEOPostiveLTD
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/06/2012 - 20:03Today's Follow Friday post is a follow up to yesterday's post about Triberr. The people on the list have tweeted links to various blog entries I've posted. Many of them have lots of followers and many are focused on topics like SEO or social marketing. @ChrisVoss gets a special shout out for suggesting triberr and for having lots of interesting posts. @kevnetik and a few others don't have a lot of followers yet, but have some interesting content. I will be watching their content and tweeting the most interesting ones.
My post about the Divided Brain has gotten a lot of traffic as has my post about Triberr. A few of my New Years posts also got some good traffic. I'll look more closely at the google analytics later.
I've also gotten a few more comments than usual and I need to go back read some of them and respond.
This gets me to perhaps my key concern for Triberr and the people I'm connecting with. While it is nice to have some added traffic, I am hoping to get some added interaction. Is there anyone else out there playing with open courseware? Are there interesting topics that I should be looking more closely into?
This will be where we find the real power of Triberr, or the lack thereof.
The Nimble Triberr on Empire Avenue
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/05/2012 - 21:13Recently, Chris Voss posted a mission on Empire Avenue encouraging people to check out his blog post about Triberr. I had read about Triberr a while ago, and at the time, it didn't sound like a good fit. However, a recent article from the folks at Ragan Communications caused me to think again. So, I watched Chris' video, and contacted him for an invite. I am now part of his tribe on Triberr.
Triberr seems like an interesting platform, especially now that the issues that Mark Schaefer talked about in his Ragan article have been addressed. I've spent a little time getting to know it, and I may use it, in part as a new style blog reader. However, it does have one major flaw, in my mind, which I hope they will address in a future upgrade.
The way Triberr works, is that you add your RSS feed to your account, and it shares it with everyone in each of your tribes. The problem is, that I write about quite an eclectic collection of topics and the tribes I'm interested in are quite eclectic. I use Drupal for my content management system, and I can give people RSS feeds based on my topics. I do the same thing with a Wordpress blog I run at work. I would really like to be able to add the RSS feed of specific topics to specific tribes. That is, Triberr should link RSS feeds to specific tribes that a user is in, instead of to all the tribes.
It may be that there is some way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.
In Chris' post, he warned about people spamming Triberr and currently, I'm scanning the posts in Chris' tribe to see which ones I really want to send out to my Twitter feed. There have been a few interesting posts and a few people have tweeted about my posts. All in all, it seems pretty good.
I have been reading each post before I tweet them and have found some interesting posts. In particular, Chris has another post about a social media customer relationship management system called Nimble. As I listened to Chris' video, I thought, this is exactly what I've been writing about and looking for for quite a while.
Fortunately, there is a free trial, so I've started using it. I'm still getting used to it, so I imagine there is a lot I'm missing, but so far, I'm really impressed. I look forward to playing with it a lot more.
However, before I do that, I figure I should get today's blog post up.
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 01/04/2012 - 20:03
Fiona's First Press Pass
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/31/2011 - 13:34For nearly four years, Fiona has been doing an Internet based radio show on Blogtalkradio. Earlier this month, she interviewed Jen Alexander about Middnight on Main, a big New Year's Eve celebration in Middletown, CT.
I've been working to help promote the event and I asked if Fiona could get a press pass. Everyone agreed, so she will be attending the celebration as a journalist. She is very excited.
We've spent time pouring over the list of great bands and other performances, as well as the food trucks and other wonderful eating opportunities. I've tweaked Kim's phone to make it easier for Fiona to tweet and blog and do interviews from Kim's phone.
I've also set up some new pages for Fiona. She is too young to have a Facebook account according to their terms of service. However, an older person can set up a Facebook page for her, so I've set up Facebook Fan Page. I also set up a page on about.me to make it easier to find some of her postings.
With that, it is time for us to rush out and begin the festivities and the coverage.
