Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Random Updates, #DPAC4, Balloon Boy, Swine Flu, the Coast Guard, Google Wave
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/28/2009 - 08:38In case anyone didn’t notice, yesterday, I attended DPAC 4. I sent out about 140 tweets from the conference. I received around 30 replies, many of them retweets of what I had sent out. A lot of the people were old friends from other conferences, but I ended up following about a dozen new people. I had a net growth of five new followers, but that is a little misleading since there is always churn as old fake followers get deleted and new fake followers crop up. I reality I picked up at least a dozen new real followers. More importantly, I had a lot of great discussions and gathered a bunch of interesting new ideas to write about over the coming month. These days, I’m interested in the number of tweets and the changes to followers and those I’m following as a metric on how good a conference is. It actually can be used to analyze how interesting each panel is, as well.
During my train ride into New York, I mostly slept. I’m hoping to build up my defenses and avoid what is going around. My daughter Fiona stayed home sick yesterday and is sick again today. She does not have a fever and I do not believe it is swine flu, or if it is, it is very mild. About 10% of the students at her school are out. The local middle school has about 29% absent, and at least three school districts in Connecticut, in Guilford, Middletown and Burlington have closed because of the swine flu. Meanwhile, I continue read more blogs about how this is just another fake media frenzy driven by evil operatives in the Obama White House. I just want to let people know that tin foil hats has not been proven effective in preventing the spread of swine flu.
As I headed from the conference to the train station in the evening, I saw a heading proclaiming that the Coast Guard exercise on 9/11 this year was ill-advised but did not violate agency policies. I would suggest it was ill advised because, my friends wearing the tin hats to protect themselves against swine flu have a good reason to suspect that the media is driving frenzies and not providing news. The same media that brought you Balloon Boy is bound to bring sensationalized fictitious information about Coast Guard exercises. My tweet, “[Steven] Brill [of Journalism Online, LLC asks,] will you pay for someone to make sense out of all the raw content? Brill thinks so. I don't.” was frequently retweeted. The only surprise is that in this day of Balloon Boy, Mr. Brill thinks there are people that would actually pay for that sort of editorial efforts to make sense out of raw content.
On the way home, I spent more time getting to know the characters that I hope to appear in my National Novel Writing Month novel.
Today, Fiona is still at home, still sick. It will cut into my productivity at a time that I really can’t afford it. I have over 4000 unread emails in my inbox, and a couple computer consulting projects to make headway on, including some work in Joomla. No, I’m not abandoning Drupal, but there are times that I work with clients that use other content management systems.
I also finally received an invite to Google Wave. What looks most promising to me about it is the integration with Google Gadgets. I’ve looked at Google Gadgets before as part of my explorations into Shindig, so when I get some free time, I want to look at Drupal to Shindig to Google Gadgets to Google Wave connectivity. Then, when I finally get around to getting an Android, I can have some real fun. But now, time to start plowing through some of the tasks at hand.
Follow Friday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/16/2009 - 13:15#cttu @SuziCraig @lisadavenport @ljwaks @jobtutors @kparlin @PicSeshu @MyCaricaturecom @AgentMurphy @cellularchloe @EnzaDandeneau @derekbeere
On Fridays, I attempt to put up a Follow Friday post relating to people that I follow on Twitter and have had recent interactions with. Using TwitterFeed it automatically shows up on Twitter as well. It also shows up on Facebook, and identi.ca, even though some identi.ca people grumpily say they don’t do Follow Friday. Today’s Follow Friday post is around the CT Tweet Crawl. “CT TweetCrawl is a mix of suits, creatives, seasoned pros, media folk and entrepreneurs who connect at local venues worth talking about.“ As a geeky media type, I just barely fit the bill and felt a tad out of place there. However, I did meet a bunch of interesting people and had some great conversations.
Starting off the list is @SuziCraig of Fathom. She organizes the Tweet crawls, does a good job of it, and understands the importance of social media.
The Tweet Crawl’s host as @lisadavenport of Lisa Davenport’s Home Gallery. The Home Gallery was a wonderful setting for the event, even though the decorating motifs seemed more traditional than the geeky pile of spare computer parts that I like to decorate with.
The most interesting discussion I had was with @ljwaks. Dr. Waks writes about Education 2.0. He’s just started his blog, and his posts are long and ponderous. Much different than the 140 characters you find on twitter, but well worth the read.
Another interesting person was Peter Begin of The Alternative Board in Greater Hartford. Peter is a former Fortune 500 CFO who helps owners of small businesses set up ‘alternative boards’ that get together and share ideas on how on make their companies as successful as possible. He is just starting to look at social media and I couldn’t find him on Twitter yet.
Also in the business area is Stephen Harvey of @jobtutors. He is a former executive recruiter who now helps train people in how to mount more effective job searches. He is also just starting to get his feet wet in social media. It seems like his business is well suited for exploring wise use of social media as well as modeling that use.
Leading the pack for the creatives is @kparlin. She is about to be launching a new site about creativity called SparkLab. In addition, her husband runs a photography business in Connecticut.
Another photographer at the event was @PicSeshu. On his current site, Seshu.net he describes himself as a “documentary wedding photographer serving multicultural, ethnic & interfaith clients in Connecticut, New England and around the world”. He comes at this with a background in journalism and does some amazing photography. Of course, after everyone gets married, they start having kids and he’s starting to expand his business into children photography as well. He showed some of his work in that area which was quite amazing as well.
If photograph isn’t your thing, you might want to check out @MyCaricaturecom. You should check out some of his work on his website.
I spoke with plenty of other people including @AgentMurphy, @cellularchloe, @EnzaDandeneau, and @derekbeere
So, that’s my #CTTU Follow Friday. There are others that I probably should have mentioned, but perhaps I’ll get them next time around. So, who are you following?
#CTTU “I get my brand views on Twitter”
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/15/2009 - 20:58On December 1st and 2nd, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold Public Workshops and Roundtables: From Town Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?. I am thinking of attending and wearing my shirt which says, “I get my news on Twitter”. This shirt always seems to give old newspaper editors palpitations and the recent news coming out of Puerto Rico, which I got primarily via Twitter reinforces my views.
The workshops and conferences are going to ask questions like “How is the Internet changing advertising expenditures? What further changes are forecast?” It is popular to blame at least part of the decline in advertising revenue for newspapers on sites like Craigslist. Craigslist is siphoning off the classified advertisements. But what about the business advertisers? I didn’t have any clear information on this, but a discussion I was part of last night changed some of my thinking.
I attended a “Tweet Crawl”. This is an event where people who communicate with one another via Twitter get together to talk face to face. In the old days, these sorts of meetings were dominated by geeks like myself talking APIs and interfaces. Last night, the meeting seemed dominated by business people and marketing executives. It took place at Lisa Davenport’s Home Gallery. Ms. Davenport supplied the food and drinks for the attendees and by agreeing to be the host of the event had over fifty influentials pack her space. It is too early to tell how much sales and buzz this will generate for her, but it is fair to guess that it will generate a lot more bang for the buck than the spreads she had been buying in local papers.
In one conversation, Ms. Davenport commented about the lack of effectiveness she had seen from print advertising. Kara Parlin commented about similar experiences she’s seen with her husband’s company, Sonny Parlin Photography print advertising campaigns. Ms. Davenport related a story of the one time that the newspaper had driven traffic to her store. She took questions from readers for a series on interior design and gave recommendations in return. Her phone rang off the hook, but the newspaper pulled the series claiming that it was giving her unfair advantage over other interior designers. It seemed like the one opportunity that the newspaper had to make advertizing effective they abandoned.
The discussion drifted to how Ms. Davenport might be able to use social marketing in collaboration with a realtor that was attending the gathering to boost sales for both parties. Standing in the background, Suzi Craig of Fathom who helped organize the event smilingly nodded her head in agreement with the discussion and made herself available to anyone else that wanted to know more about social marketing.
As I headed home, I thought about the shirt I had been wearing. If the shirt “I get my news on Twitter” causes palpitations for old newspaper editors, a new shirt may send them into cardiac arrest: “I get my brand views on Twitter”.
Yet newspapers don’t need to be left out of the equation. A good newspaper is always part of a local social community and if they started incorporating social marketing into the advertising packages they sell, they could increase revenues and provide a greater service to local businesses. Will local papers find a way of doing this? Perhaps we can talk about this in Washington.
(Originally published at DigiDayDaily.)
#cttu CT Tweet Crawl - Brief Initial Reations.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/15/2009 - 10:10Years ago, I read the book The Soul Of A New Machine
Unlike other social media gatherings I’ve attended where people stare down at their shoes and start conversations with lines like What app do you use to access twitter? Are you writing a Twitter app? Or my favorite, “Nice cell phone. Got any good mods on it?” This was a social media gathering that had moved from the hands of the geeks to the hands of the marketers. People asked, “What do you do? What do you Tweet about?” I felt vaguely uncomfortable and glanced longingly around to see if anyone else had a plastic pocket protector. No such luck.
As I waded into the conversations I explained that I had not been able to make it to any previous CT Tweet Crawls; they always conflicted with other events for me. However, I’ve been to plenty of other social media gatherings. Mostly, we talked about podcamps. However, it got me thinking about the first social media gathering I attended.
It was in 1982 in New York City. I was working at Bell Labs and participating in various discussions on Usenet. I posted an invite to a Halloween party we were having on a couple Usenet groups and several folks from various research labs showed up. Those were the days; geeks in costumes standing in a corner drinking beer and talking about routing algorithms. There was also the hardcore AI geek staring out the window talking to himself, I assume, but he could have been doing that anywhere.
On the other side of the country, friends were having parties that you could only attend if you had an at-sign in your address. This wasn’t the at sign of Twitters. These were the at signs of SMTP addresses according to RFC-821. Sure, sometimes they would allow someone with the double colons of a Decnet address or the exclamation point of a UUCP address into their parties, but really you needed to be able to take that address and create a route that would connect it to the SMTP world, usually through ucbvax. But I digress.
In the end, I had some fascinating discussions with people at the CT Tweet Crawl and I didn’t even have to stare out the window and talk to myself, although in these days of cell phones, that seems much more acceptable. I’m digging though my emails as well as the cards I collected and random other tasks to accomplish today. When I get a chance, I hope to write more about some of the interesting discussions about the CT Tweet Crawl.
So, have you been to any social media gatherings? What were they like for you?
A BlogCatalog EntreCard Inbox for Adgitize or CMF Users
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 10:34When the latest issues with EntreCard developed, I started looking at ways to more completely replicate the EntreCard experience. Sites like Adgitize and CMF Ads provided a good way to advertise and be an advertiser, and BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog provided nice lists of recent readers. Yet none of this effectively replicated the ‘Inbox’ on EntreCard.
When a person drops a card on EntreCard, the blog owner sees the card, and can return the visit, feeling fairly confident that the visitor is still using EntreCard. The functionality to easily return a visit for BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog is there, but not as easy as with EntreCard.
It was with this in mind that I wrote the Enhanced BlogCatalog Surfer. Initially, I wrote it as a test script on one of my internal Linux boxes. When it started working a little more nicely, I added it as a post on my blog.
The page takes two optional parameters, userid and count. So, if you want to see the ten most recent visitors of kml, you would go to http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/3774?userid=kml&count=10. It defaults to my five most recent visitors.
However, having a quick and easy link to people that have visited me via BlogCatalog was not enough. What I really want to do is visit those sites that have Adgitize or CMF Ads. So, I added a little lookup. If it is a page that I’ve visited before, I add a note to a file that I keep about the blog, and whether they have EntreCard, Adgitize, CMF Ads, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and in some cases other widgets on their site.
So when I ran this as I wrote this post, the only site showing up that I had details on was Cornyman. He has EntreCard, CMF, Adgitize and BlogCatalog on his site, and so I know that visiting him will provide me with good opportunities to surf ads from other sites and that it will leave my smiling little face up in his BlogCatalog widget.
It is worth noting that not everyone using BlogCatalog has a BlogCatalog widget on their screen, so if you are looking to show up in a recent readers list, just because they are on BlogCatalog doesn’t mean your visit will be obvious to anyone, unless they have the widget.
So, this is the first pass of my Enhanced BlogCatalog Surfer. I use it now as part of my efforts to find interesting blogs to read for the day, along with checking my EntreCard inbox and surfing various ads.
I’ve currently entered 90 sites into my list of recognized BlogCatalog users, and I’m slowly adding to that list. Over time, I expect it to change. Ideally, down the road, I would love to have a program that looks at all the various blogging and social networks and lets me know which most influential blogs according to my personal ranking have been updated most recently. Eventually I’ll get there.
Any geeks that are out there that want to get a copy of my code, as it is, are welcome to it, just let me know. It is still pretty messy code as it continues to evolve. Everyone else, feel free to use my surfer. Let me know what recommendations you have.
