Social Media

Posts about Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The Increasing Price We Pay For The Free Internet

Picture : Rhadaway. This is a follow-up on my previous post, A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers. A key point in that post was that we need to be customers, not commodities.  In the cases of Facebook, Google and the vast majority of free web resources, the business model is to provide a content platform for the public and fund the business via advertising.  In this model, simply, our content is the commodity.  The customer is the advertiser.  And the driving decisions regarding product features relate more to how many advertisers they can bring on and retain than how they can meet the… Read More »The Increasing Price We Pay For The Free Internet

A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers

For a website that hosts so many cute pet videos, Facebook is not a place that reeks of happiness and sincerity. It’s populated by a good chunk of the world, and it’s filled with a lot of meaningful moments captured in text, camera and video by people who know that, more and more every day, this is where you can share these moments with a broad segment of your friends and family. And that’s the entire hook of Facebook — it’s where everybody is.  The feature set is not the hook, because Google Plus and a variety of other platforms offer similar feature sets. And many… Read More »A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers

Career Management In The Social Media Era

If you believe that your current job is your last job — the one that you will retire from — raise your hand.  You can stop reading. Now that those two people are gone, let’s talk about managing our careers. Because its a whole new discipline these days. Gone are the days when submitting a resume was sufficient.  Good jobs go to people who are referred in, not to those with no one to vouch for them. Per the ERE recruiter network, between 28% and 40% of all positions in 2012 were given to candidates that were referred in, but only 7% of all candidates were… Read More »Career Management In The Social Media Era

Debating Proper Project Management Discipline

I just had a fun, spirited debate on Twitter about the definition of a project. It started when a friend of mine tweeted this: #ProjectManagement for Beginners (re: #1, remember that project has a fixed duration) 5 min video @projecttipshttp://t.co/jVKHP8UXdH — Norman Reiss (@nonprofitbridge) April 24, 2014 Now, my team at Legal Services Corporation recently finished a project (at least, that’s what I call it) to redesign the Find Legal Aid lookup on our website.  I blogged about that effort, which was kickstarted by the DC Legal Hackers, on LSC’s tech blog.  A few things about this: There was no deadline. It was something that… Read More »Debating Proper Project Management Discipline

The End Of NPTech (.INFO)

After eight years, I’ve decided to shutter the nptech.info website, which will also disable the @nptechinfo twitter feed that was derived from it.  Obviously, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus have made RSS aggregation sites like nptech.info obsolete. Further, as Google ranks links from aggregators lower and lower on the optimization scale, it seems like I might be doing more harm than good by aggregating all of the nptech blogs there. It will be better for all if I spend my efforts promoting good posts on social media, rather than automatically populating a ghost town. Long-time Techcafeterians will recall that NPTECH.INFO used to be a pretty… Read More »The End Of NPTech (.INFO)

Best Of 2012: Nonprofit Technology Grows Up

This article was first published on the NTEN Blog in December of 2012. I think that the best thing that happened in 2012 was that some of the 2010-2011 “bleeding edge” conceptual technologies stood up and proved they weren’t fads. By Peter Campbell Nonprofit Technologist, Techcafeteria When NTEN asked me to write a “best tech of 2012” post, I struggled a bit. I could tell you about the great new iPads and Nexus tablets; the rise of the really big phones; the ascendency of Salesforce; and the boundary-breaking, non-gaming uses of MicroSoft’s Kinect. These are all significant product developments, but I think that the David Pogues and Walter Mossberg’s out there will have them covered.… Read More »Best Of 2012: Nonprofit Technology Grows Up

My Foray Into Personal Fundraising

This article was first published on the Idealware Blog in December of 2011. My work planning for, evaluating and deploying technology at nonprofits requires that I have a good understanding of fundraising concepts and practices, and I do.  It’s an area that I’m sufficiently knowledgeable about, but no expert. So my current personal fundraising campaign for Idealware is an amateur effort. It is, happily, a successful one. I did some things right, including, I think, making strategic use of my social networking connections and channels. I might have done a few things differently, given what I’ve learned.  And much of the success has been instructive. Setting Up… Read More »My Foray Into Personal Fundraising

Two Thoughts On The New FaceBook Timeline

Facebook announced that, on October 3rd, our profiles will all turn into “Timelines” that describe our lives (as Facebook knows them) in a glossy, magazine like format. And, as of right now, you can enable magazine apps (for WaPo and Guardian, more to come) that will randomly post what you’re reading to your wall without asking your permission first.I have two thoughts on this:

Is Google+ The Future Of Networking, Social And Otherwise?

This article was originally published on the Idealware Blog in July of 2011. Google unleashed their latest attempt to grab the focus from Facebook and Twitter with Google+, a Social Network that, at first glance, looks like a Facebook clone, but differentiates itself in at least one significant way: the people you communicate with on Google+, along with the way that you do it and the tools for inviting and connecting people are far superior to the social networking competition and they emulate the way we communicate in real life.  This makes for a very engaging and, once you have a handle on it, comfortable… Read More »Is Google+ The Future Of Networking, Social And Otherwise?