Posts about Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Social media is casual media. The Web 2.0 approach is to present a true face to the world, one that interacts with the public and allows for individuals, with individual tastes and opinions, to share organizational information online. So a strict rule book and mandated wording for your talking points are not going to work.
RSS, one of my favorite protocols, has been taking a beating in the blogosphere. Steve Gillmor, in his blog TechcrunchIT, declared it dead in May, and many others have followed suit.
As the internet has progressed from a shared source of information to a primary communications tool, a natural offshoot of the migration has been where the two things meet: people referring internet information. If you’re active at all on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendfeed, or any of the numerous online communities, big or small, then you are regularly seeing links to useful articles and blog posts; cute YouTube videos, and entertaining photos. Much of this information is passed along from online friend to online friend, but where does the first referral originate from? Usually, it’s somebody’s RSS reader.
Interesting things pop up on the web all of the time; here are a few things I think are worth sharing:
Google Reader gets a good mention in my RSS article, Using RSS Tools to Feed your Information Needs, but deserves an even deeper dive. This is a follow-up to that article, along with my recent posts on Integrating content with websites, and Managing Content with Pipes. We’ve established that an RSS Reader helps you manage internet information far more efficiently than a web browser can; and we’ve talked in the last few posts about publishing feeds to your web site. This post focuses on using tools like Google Reader to share research .
LinkedIn has Facebook envy, and Facebook has Twitter envy. Ignoring MySpace (my general recommendation), these are three big social networks that, sadly, seem to be trying to co-opt each others strengths rather than differentiate themselves. Per Readwriteweb, LinkedIn is jealous of Facebook’s page views, and is looking for ways (like applications) to keep users connected to the web site. More noticeably, Facebook’s recent failed attempt to buy Twitter was followed up by a redesign that makes Facebook much more like Twitter. Al of this inter-related activity has created some confusion as to what one should or shouldn’t do where, and a question as to whether… Read More »Feed Fight
…here’s what I want to write on her wall:
Those of us who actively create internet content — which includes many nonprofits, at this point – were fairly blindsided by a small, subsequently revoked change in Facebook’s terms of service this month. The earlier terms allowed Facebook to use any content that a user publishes to the site in a variety of ways, as long as the user kept the content on the site. The change extended Facebook’s rights to use beyond it’s time on their system. They could keep using it after the user removed it, and they could even keep using it after the user cancelled their account. Facebook’s defense of this action
Twitter is my favorite social network. Why? Because it’s easy to use (type a short message and hit enter); it’s easy to follow (just keep scrolling through the main page); it’s more casually interactive than the competitors; and, because I follow it in Twhirl, which is always in the upper-lefthand corner of my desktop, it’s always there. To contrast, I usually have Facebook open in a Firefox tab, as well, but I can go for hours without thinking to click on it.
Friends of mine who are active on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are fond of proclaiming that email is dead. And, certainly, those of us who are active on these networks send less email to each other than we used to. I’m much more likely to direct message, tweet, or write on someone’s wall if I have a quick question, comment or information referral for someone, the latter two if it’s a question or info that I might benefit from having other people in my online community see.