SlideShow: How To Optimize Your Social Data Flow for All Networks

Following on to this weekend's post on knowing and mastering your social media data flow, I updated the information and have created a presentation for download, for easier portability.

How To Optimize Your Social Media Data Flow for All Networks

View more presentations from Louis Gray.

This is also the first time I have had the option to use my brand-new presentation template, so please do let me know what you think!

Are LinkedIn Groups Tuckered Out?

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Is LinkedIn making the leap beyond an online resume service into a socially-rich, community-driven platform? Last year LinkedIn announced its new application platform in an effort to stimulate the interactivity of its members, and also announced enhanced groups as part of this bold initiative to seed itself as the proverbial Facebook for professionals.

Many of you enjoy LinkedIn as an online holster for your professional accolades as well for keeping in touch with your professional network. One often used mechanism is that of groups. Perhaps you participate in some groups based upon your geography, your personal and professional interests, or maybe you simply want to network.

I began experimenting with a group to share more industry specific content with my network in the hopes of generating some interesting conversations. I took my time to pipe in several industry specific news feeds to keep content fresh, sent personal notes to each group member as they joined, and even posted regular discussion topics hoping to elicit opinions.

I watched the daily e-mail updates roll through, and was disappointed in the results of my social experiment; Discussion topics and news items alike consistently showed "0 comments", denoting the simple fact the discussions simply weren't happening. I quickly realized it was time to take a step back and taken inventory of the situation.

I started paying attention more closely to how I interacted with the default, daily e-mail digests I would receive from other industry-groups I had joined. Below are some samples of what I began to consistently see:

While the first group has over 5,100 members and the second has almost 900 members (after forming just a few months ago), amazingly, day after day I would see little to no activity outside of the posted discussions or news items themselves.

While my little social experiment is hardly comprehensive, discussions with other professionals in my network have offered much of the same qualitative analysis: Only a small percentage of groups see any significant conversation threads. So it would seem that in the minds of many I network with, LinkedIn groups are on the outs.

What are your experiences with LinkedIn groups? Are they helping you extend the conversation and do they yield benefits you would care to express?

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Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. He is always interested in connecting; To discover the many ways you may connect with him, visit him at DandyID.

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How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities

As social networking and social media sites increasingly become as much about companies and brands as they are about people, you are seeing names like Zappos and JetBlue tweeting alongside you, and Comcast answering complaints. Companies might be making comments on FriendFeed and asking you to join their fan page on Facebook. Many of you, possibly tasked with maintaining the social media presence for your company, might be maintaining multiple accounts on practically every network, and trying to keep your personalities in check, lest you make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. For the last four months, I've been doing the same thing. Here's how.

Put Your Work Life In One Browser, and You In Another

Everybody has multiple browsers these days. Whether you prefer Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or something else, you probably have a second one which you use less. Rather than ask you to login and log out over and over, set up one of your browsers with bookmarks to all your work activity and the social media sites with that account, and keep your preferred browser all yours.

For my work account, I use Firefox, and for me, I use Safari.

When I open Firefox, the browser opens five distinct tabs:

• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Twitter Search
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

The GMail account tracks new subscribers and DMs. Google Reader populates the link blog. Twitter search watches what is being said online, and Twitter and FriendFeed let the company participate.

Running the browsers in parallel lets me do the work I need to in both, without suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Make A Second Login, Preferences for TweetDeck

TweetDeck, in my opinion, is still the best way to track groups and saved searches in Twitter. I set up TweetDeck so if I am logged in as me, the application has the standard black look and feel. But when I am logged in with the company ID, TweetDeck is in the company colors of blue and orange. Yes, the combination is somewhat garish, but it serves as a reminder to me that I'm logged in for work, so I won't screw up.


Logged Into TweetDeck as the Company

Logged Into TweetDeck as Me
Beyond the colors, you should leverage TweetDeck's saved search functionality to track your company and product mentions, as well as that of competitors.

Create a Second Disqus Account for Commenting

When commenting on blogs around the Web, as yourself, or for the company, it makes sense to use best practices and identify who you are. But you don't necessarily want to track your work comments to your personal ID. I recommend getting a second Disqus account that ties back to your work e-mail address, and have that registered in the "work" browser. When I make comments on sites as work, it says my first and last name, and then, in parentheses, the company name.

Always Work Methodically When Acting on Behalf of the Company

Tweeting or commenting or blogging or bookmarking as a brand is more risky than when you do it on your own. As with all things on the Web, you should consider how they could be interpreted downstream. But when you are doing something on behalf of a corporate entity that represents products, people, history and finance, you should take an extra breath before acting, and pay extra attention to every word, character or nuance.

Be Replaceable

If you do your job well, it should be easy for you to pass off the reins of the social media strategy at your company to somebody else with very little impact. If you make the company's social media presence all about you, it will follow you where you go next, and could negatively damage the company you are leaving, and distract from the company where you are going. See that you can work on behalf of the company without it being all about you. Try to offer personality without it necessarily being your distinct personality.

You'll note I don't often talk about work here on the blog. It was a conscious decision I made when starting the site at the beginning of 2006. It's not a secret where I work (check my LinkedIn profile) but it's not about where I work. It's all part of keeping things separate. Are you running the social media activity for your company, or looking to get started? I would be interested in the tips you may have as well.

You Should Be Using LinkedIn for Demand Generation

LinkedIn can be much more than simply a site to host your online resume, and connect with colleagues. While the site's core mission may be to keep your job history in one place, and to leverage connections you have to find new people, the vast, fast-growing, database can be leveraged for much more. At a time when many companies are cutting back on their marketing and prospecting budgets, LinkedIn presents a significant opportunity to find new targets and stir up business.

In late 2007, I talked about how LinkedIn is an incredible resource for sharp reporters and bloggers. Earlier in the year, I'd also given the company some suggestions to improve, many of which have since been implemented. But there is no question in my mind that most LinkedIn users are not taking advantage of the features that are there now.

Finding Targets By Territory and Vertical

LinkedIn's advanced search offers the ability to search by many different attributes, from the user's location to their title, and industry, not just their current job or school history. If you are a sales account manager, inside sales rep, a researcher, or in marketing, the right set of search combinations can get you a list of people, with titles and companies, giving you a starting point to get calling and e-mailing.

For example, if you own the Los Angeles territory, and want to reach technology VPs in the entertainment industry, enter the Zip Code ("90012"), choose the title of "Vice President of Technology, and the Industry of Entertainment. (See the search here)


The results are sorted by their linkage to you, starting with those you are connected to, and then to those who are connected to your friends. The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to have top matches. And once you have these names and companies, with their titles, it just takes a little Sales 101 to get their phone numbers and e-mail, either through the Web, or by being nice to their office receptionists.

You can see more examples here: (CTOs near Sunnyvale in Computer Hardware or Internet and VPs of Sales near Seattle in Airlines and Aviation)

If you're not sure exactly how targets refer to their industry, do a search first on someone you know, or are connected to, and use them as the template. That person you thought would choose "Entertainment" just might have put themselves in "Motion Pictures and Film" instead.

Finding Contacts by Title and Company

If you already know the company you want to break into, you can do searches on the company and reduce your targets by title. For example, on LinkedIn, you can search for "artist at Pixar" and pitch them the latest animation tool, or "scientist at Sandia" to find out who is keeping watch over our atomic weapons arsenal.

Depending on the query, you can end up with many targets, or you can drill down to the perfect one you need. (Such as the Technorati CEO)

Execute a Friendly Game of Competitive Espionage

Here's one I am particularly fond of. Even in the most cutthroat of environments, you can sometimes make friends with your competitors' staff, be it through trade shows, or other venues where you both need to show up at the same place and play nice. Getting connected to them won't hurt you all that much, especially if you hide your connections from others. But it can especially benefit you if they don't hide their connections, giving you a Rolodex you can walk through, to find both potential partners, and, potentially, naming their entire prospect and customer list by name.

The very best person to link to in this case is your competition's sales territory manager. I've done it. As LinkedIn shows you their latest connections, you can get good insight into which meetings they have held this week, and traded business cards. Or, you can go to their Web site, see listed customer references, and then cross-check those company names against your new friend's LinkedIn list.

It's pure gold. And if the person is high enough up in the chart, you might just want to hit Print on every single one of their LinkedIn connections pages and hand it off to Inside Sales. In fact, connecting to the competition is the primary reason I don't share my connections list. I want access to their business cards, but I don't necessarily want them to have mine.

If you're using LinkedIn in hopes of attracting a new job, or just to keep a PDF copy of your resume handy, that's fine. But if you already have a job, and you want to make it as successful as possible, you should be using the tools right in front of you. Don't be afraid to link up to more people, as it gets you more names as the connections extend and open you new routes of communication and search detail. I've been using LinkedIn for demand generation for years, and if you're in Marketing or Sales, I recommend you do as well.

What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

That I like FriendFeed and so does Robert Scoble and so do a few thousand other Web-addicted Silicon Valley-centric people doesn't matter very much. That thousands more have signed up to the service and imported their data doesn't matter very much either. That the service has a ton of bells and whistles and some smart people behind it and manages to have some great uptime, compared to other services, also won't make it successful. Because what I'm seeing, and continue to hear, is that the site is too busy. It's too intimidating for new users, and some who have even stepped up to give it the old college try are asking for help (See: Om Malik of GigaOM).

Why? Because as great as I believe the service is, the learning curve is sharp. People aren't getting its utility right away. They aren't finding friends right away, or understanding why they should spend time to participate. Others are intimidated by the sheer volume of updates coming from people seemingly embedded in the Web, be they Robert, myself or many others.

In December, Robert wrote a piece, "10 Reasons why Twitter is for you and FriendFeed is not", where he outlined some of the top-level differences between the two services. And while he was jokingly saying Twitter's lack of features made it a better option for some people than FriendFeed, there was truth to it.

Given FriendFeed is relying largely on word of mouth from users, and press from bloggers and other tech publications to help raise awareness, and hasn't yet invested in a Marketing department or a more official outreach strategy, they can consider this abbreviated Marketing Requirements Document to be pro bono:

FriendFeed Must Have a Lite Version for New Users

New users signing up to FriendFeed, by default, see all updates from all friends who they are following, as well as updates from friends of a friend. This means that even if you start out following only a few dozen people, be they those automatically synchronized with your Facebook account, or recommended well-known Silicon Valley digerati, you can be flooded with updates from Twitter, Blogs, bookmarking sites, external commenting sites, BrightKite location notices, photos from Flickr and other sites, videos from YouTube, and even items from Amazon.com wish lists. And not only do you have to see all this from the people you know, but you'll even have to see updates from friends of those you know, if your friends have made an action on their updates.

What needs to happen is that FriendFeed must tier their offering, for "small", "medium" and "large" consumption. The Lite version would probably start out with blog postings, Flickr photos, and native FriendFeed entries. The default behavior should be that you would need to "opt in" to see a service, rather than be forced to opt out or hide every single one of them as FriendFeed adds them. FriendFeed already supports more than 50 different services, but the excitement this may bring to power users is just overwhelming to new folks.

The data should still be available in a tab that says "Show Me More" or "What You're Missing", etc., but you have got to not aim the firehose at those who aren't ready.

FriendFeed Should Help You Find Your Real Friends Better

If you weren't referred to FriendFeed from an existing user, you're starting off from scratch in the friends department. FriendFeed helpfully offers you an array of popular users, based on other subscribers' activity, but it's highly unlikely you're on a first name basis with all of them, and they're probably not "really" your friends.

Assuming you register your Facebook account with FriendFeed, it will check your existing friend base and see if they are registered with FriendFeed, and automatically add them to the people you follow. You also can find your friends by importing your address book from GMail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. But as many found when Google Reader assumed those you e-mailed most out of GMail were your real friends, that doesn't exactly solve it either.

FriendFeed should do a few things here. First, they should enable you to cross-reference those people you follow on Twitter (which is a noisy option). Second, you should be able to synchronize those you follow on LinkedIn as easily as you do your friends on Facebook. If you're linked on LinkedIn, maybe you should have the option to follow them on FriendFeed, getting you connected with colleagues. Third, and most importantly, FriendFeed should have content-based intelligence. You should be able to list your interests, much as Facebook does, and get recommendations for who discusses those topics. Fourth, you should be able to add details to a profile, including hometown, schooling background, etc, and get friend recommendations very similar to Facebook's often spot-on "People You May Know" feature.

You would also have the option to get weekly e-mails with updates on "People You May Know", much like LinkedIn shows you that new colleagues and classmates have started to use the service.

FriendFeed Must Be Doing Outreach and Communication With Inactive Users

Having always been active, I wouldn't have encountered the team's doing this, but I have seen a significant number of people who have had very little activity on the service following initial registration. They may not have had comments or "liked" anything in months. But they sure do count when it comes to total users, and their data is quietly pouring into the service!

FriendFeed should be actively courting these stale, abandoned accounts, and updating them on new features, or highlighting site usage case studies. It's practically a pastime on the Web to register for new sites, but it's not doing the FriendFeed community any good to be browsing and acting on the items of digital ghosts.

FriendFeed Should Help to Get New Users Engaged More Quickly

Long-time users have a distinct advantage over new users in terms of feeling engaged on the site. As with high school, or any other forum on the Web, you have regulars who get in a state of comfort, communicating with the same people who interact in small social circles. New users who join the site do so invisibly until they start acting on other people's items. New users who understand the service and register their feeds may see almost no activity as they are not added or even seen by other users at first, and the comparative silence on their own feeds is sometimes enough for people to feel ignored and leave.

FriendFeed could, instead, choose to have an area dedicated to new users who have joined the service over the last 1, 7 or 30 days (as they do with top items), and assuming you can fill out any identifiable data, as mentioned above, around hometowns, school, and interests, these new users could be grouped. (e.g. 25 new users within 30 miles of 94086 joined in the last 7 days)

FriendFeed Should Deliver A Desktop Application and iPhone App

The introduction of TweetDeck has changed the way many people use Twitter. It takes all the different options of Twitter and put them in a highly-customizable app, incorporating DMs, Replies, Groups, and Search. I've heard people say they won't use FriendFeed until it gets integrated into TweetDeck, and the current third-party apps for FriendFeed pale in comparison to the Web offering. The iPhone offering is good as well, but doesn't feel as polished, and lacks options one would expect in an app written for the device.

FriendFeed Needs to Better Define What It Is and How People Use It

Scoble (yes him again) recently posted a video on how you can be a power user of FriendFeed, showing 20 things it's useful for. (video link)

But it took him almost half an hour! No offense to Robert, but the service has got to become a lot more simple than 30 minutes worth of explanation to get new users engaged. All sorts of companies, from consumer to enterprise, utilize case studies and customer demo videos to explain aspects of the service and benefits, and they should be done in segments as small as 30 seconds to no longer than 5 minutes.

You can see FriendFeed's early efforts to answer questions from users on their lengthy one-page FAQ. They also have a FriendFeed Feedback room on the site, which augments the service's now largely stale Google Groups forum. But "how to" videos are either non-existent or made incredibly hard to find. The "why" to use FriendFeed and how power users or more mainstream users use FriendFeed case studies are missing altogether.

FriendFeed Must Have a Sense of Urgency

2009 does not look like it is going to be friendly to companies that are long on hope and short on revenue or momentum. The team can innovate better than any other that I have seen, per capita, but the appearance is that the service is doing so in a relaxed, jovial way. Questions about a business model seem theoretical and eventual, rather than immediate. And no clear visible activity is happening that makes me think the team is working on a more aggressive way to increase awareness and adoptability of the service - all while many curious adopters are turning away from the noise.

Lacking This, What Is Happening?

Simply put, people aren't getting it. I understand the team's Google-born mentality of "build it and they will come", and the hope that if the user experience is so good, people will gravitate to it over time, or that word of mouth will be all the marketing they ever need, but usage growth has stagnated compared to other faster-growing services, like Facebook and Twitter. (See Quantcast or Compete, who both agree on the flat to downward trend.)

As one of the more visible, more active users, I tend to have a lot of activity on my feed. It's a factor of participating, having been visible early and consistently championing the service. But even the most active items rarely approach a few dozen actions, be they comments, or likes. And this number has not grown much over the last several months. Assuming FriendFeed were growing and doubling in size consistently, I should be seeing a great article, picture or update getting hundreds of actions, as the user base grows, but they're not. Popular items get 20 to 30 likes, and top ones approach 100, about the same amount of actions as the number of comments on a single TechCrunch post, even though simply "liking" an item takes much less time.

I recently ran a third party tool that compared those people I was connected to on Twitter and FriendFeed, letting me match up my lists. I was surprised to see how many people I knew on Twitter who were also using FriendFeed, or at least had registered, but had not been active. Account after account after account had seen no activity in weeks.

While I have a core of very active users who I see every day and can expect to engage with, I see those initial quiet signups as a lost opportunity, for both them and for FriendFeed, and before the problem gets worse, I think the team should make the revitalization of these abandoned accounts a priority, along with easing the transition of new accounts, reducing the dramatic potential for noise, and starting to market themselves. There's a reason I keep getting asked by people for help on getting up to speed on FriendFeed. I get it because I've been embedded for more than a year, and it really shouldn't take so much work.

LinkedIn Recommendations Are Feel Good Business for a Recession!

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Nothing feels better than a pat on the back, and LinkedIn makes no exception to this rule!For those not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional social platform to share opportunities, ideas and information. According to LinkedIn, over 30 million professionals subscribe, and some might coin the service as Facebook for business professionals.

While I don’t know whether anyone has actually landed a job from using LinkedIn, it is a great way to stay connected with clients and business colleagues alike. In this fast-moving world, keeping up with changing e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and the who-knows-who game can be daunting. LinkedIn seeks to make that easier.While most everyone knows LinkedIn for its Bacon-esque Connections feature and it’s recent launch of groups and applications, I was surprised that many I talk with know very little about the recommendation feature – or worse – are intimidated to ask for a recommendation.

Recommetiquette:

Let’s look at some LinkedIn recommendation etiquette. Quite simply put, if you feel you are worth a recommendation, ask for it. Don’t wait for someone to think of it for you. Trust me, they are thinking about a million other things than you.

This doesn’t mean that a warm and friendly request by you won’t get read. Generally, people you are connected with respect you. So ask.The worst case is that you won’t get the recommendation, and the best case is you get a glowing review from a respecting colleague or client. Lastly, always change the generic message to something more personal (but not too familiar, mind you). More on this later.

Recommendations in a nutshell:

LinkedIn makes recommendations extremely simple once you make a connection. By simply clicking on Recommendations under the Profile heading, you are presented with the option to choose which job title for which you would like to seek recommendations.
As you can see in the example above, I have a few recommendations for two of my positions. The “thumbs-up” icon to the left indicates I have at least one recommendation, and I can choose to manage or ask to be endorsed.When asking to be endorsed, it is a simple 3 step process (see below).

1. Step 1 is confirming the position you wish to be recommended for.


2. In step 2, you must decide who you’ll ask.


3. To complete the process, simply create your message. You can choose to leave the default subject and body of the message intact, but I strongly recommend you make this more personal. (Tip: It’s always great to include something personal, e.g. “It was great to see you at the last lunch n’ learn.”).


4. (Optional): Wring your hands as you wait by your computer for a response.

What goes around comes around:

Once your colleague or client completes the recommendation, you will receive a message in your inbox inviting you to approve or decline the recommendation. This is a great way to ensure the recommendation meets with your high standards, right?Perhaps the best feature about this recommendation process, in my humble opinion, is the fact that LinkedIn really believes in returning the favor. As such, you are immediately taken to a screen that asks you to write up a recommendation, in kind.

For those of you who understand recruiting practices, this is genuinely the best opportunity you will ever have to ask for a flattering recommendation. So, if you receive a request for a recommendation – make sure you take a little time and pay it forward. You never know, the very next e-mail in your inbox might just be that recommendation you have been waiting for coming right back to you…… and there’s no better time than a recession to get that feel-good you get from a LinkedIn recommendation!

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Incredible Web Efforts Made to Shield Victims of Santa Clara Shooting

Note: I recognize this is an extremely sensitive issue, and one that continues to develop, so the words I use here are measured. Condolences to all affected by this horrible incident.

On Friday, as you most likely know, an employee of Santa Clara-based SiPort, who had lost his job that morning, returned to the office and took the lives of three of his former colleagues, the CEO, VP of Operations and head of human resources. In such a difficult economic climate as we are facing now, many saw the horrible incident as one emblematic of the tough times. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch called it "a Sad Day in Silicon Valley." Knowing the startup culture well, and living in Sunnyvale, neighboring Santa Clara, I've been watching the story, and was somewhat relieved to learn tonight that the alleged perpetrator had been brought into custody, having been captured in Mountain View.

The human tragedy here, when taken out of the macroeconomic view, is devastating. The three lives were not statistics or meant to be examples. These were people with families, with jobs and goals, people who were taken from the Earth way too soon, and in a horrific way.

But as information consumers, looking to learn as much as we could about this incident as news developed, to be both informed, and alert, as the suspect was not apprehended until this evening, it has been interesting to see how much effort has been taken to reduce the information available to the public in terms of learning about the company or the victims themselves. Almost immediately, on Friday night, SiPort shut down all pages of its Web site, with the exception of the main page, including hiding the management page. And today, the entire site itself is empty (unless you view the Google cache).

With today's Web world leaning toward one of transparency and posting copious amounts of information, it's no surprise that the victims of the shooting had created online profiles, including on the career-oriented site of LinkedIn. VP of Operations Brian Pugh and human resources lead Marilyn Lewis, who lost their lives Friday, had posted online resumes. (Pugh, Lewis)


The Mercury News' Early Version Cited LinkedIn as the Source
In fact, it was via LinkedIn that reporters garnered much of their data on the victims themselves. An early version of a story in the San Jose Mercury News stated, "Lewis, who lived in a San Jose, worked at NeoScale Systems before joining SiPort in November. 2006. In a LinkedIn profile, she wrote," but in a subsequent filing of the story, this piece was amended instead to say, "In an online profile, she wrote."


Subsequent Updates Did Not Mention LinkedIn
Just past Midnight on Sunday morning, LinkedIn's Web site is down, so it's not clear if the online career site has been asked to either take down or modify their profiles, but the effort by the Mercury News to remove the reference to LinkedIn in their article seems to have been done to discourage curious Web viewers from further invading the deceased's data. The way in which these victims lost their lives is well outside of the focus of Mike Fruchter's Mashable article from last month, What Happens to Our Social Profiles After We Die?, but the data we do post on the Web about our home, work and hobbies is something that cannot be hidden, or erased, even after we might be gone.

(Update: LinkedIn is back up, and both profiles still are there, without changes)

The incident is horrible, and very close to home, geographically, as well as in terms of understanding the issues of stress, strife with colleagues and the demands one's career can place on the rest of your life. I also understand the desire for families to want privacy and for news media and others to be extremely sensitive to the victims, but to pull the data, or make it more difficult to learn about the human side of this tragedy may make it more difficult to relate to, not less. It is also very interesting to see how efforts are made to pull data and have it disappear from a Web that is built to not lose it.

Is Social Media Keeping You Out Of Touch With Reality?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

For me, social media is one of the greatest things to hit the web since RSS. I love using tools and services like Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Brightkite, Toluu, Disqus, Tweetburner, ReadBurner, RSSMeme, and tons more. The vast amount of connections I've been able to make since March would not have taken place had these social media tools and services never existed. They've made connecting with others across the globe so easy and simple. They've also landed me numerous jobs and job offers. However, when I decided to use social media to get off the computer and out of my house I began to wonder if social media was keeping me out of touch with reality.

For one, because of LinkedIn, I've yet to update my resume. Honestly, my resume is months behind my LinkedIn profile at this point and I dread updating it. I dread it because it's so much easier and much more flexible to update my LinkedIn profile. Resumes have too many rules and restrictions. I find it hard to show my personality in my resume. This is quite the opposite for me when using LinkedIn.

However, I began to realize that if LinkedIn disappeared off the face of the web, I'd have to do some serious thinking about how I would update my resume now. Also, I love the recommendations feature of LinkedIn and I've accumulated numerous recommendations. Unfortunately, I can't drag these over to my resume. Who's really going to read them in the corporate world? When I set back and thought about all of this, I felt so out of touch with reality. If there ever came a day where I needed to get a job offline, I'd probably be devasted because all of the work that I've put into my accomplishments are available online and I have no desire to pull them offline. "Real people" would think I've lost my mind.

Secondly, I'm beginning to become irritated with my offline friends that have no clue about the tools that I use. They come to me with questions and problems and I can't help but wonder what the heck do they do online? How could you not know about the vast array of tools available that can help you accomplish just about any task. This irritations progresses everytime I log into my online class. Unfortunately, the school has no type of social media offerings that I know could make things a lot easier for me. Give me a calendar or an RSS feed! Send me a tweet or something. We use forums for our group projects and I feel like they're out of touch with "my world" and I'm some type of alien. Meebo chat anyone?

Unfortunately it gets worse, but I won't elaborate on how. Instead, I'd like to ask you what are some ways that you feel social media is keeping you out of touch with reality? What are you doing to bridge the gap? Tell your story in the comments section or on FriendFeed!

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Be a Real Friend to Your Social Networking "Friends"

Not every single contact you make online is somebody you would want to spend time with in real life. While you might be following thousands of people and making new "friends" on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed and all the other networks, you would likely hesitate before sending them an open invitation to your home. But I've personally seen many examples of people I've known online crossing the chasm and operating in the world once reserved for classmates, colleagues, fellow church members and family. What might have started out as a casual acquaintance, or connection through similar interests can easily transform to one where you can connect in a more personal way.

The debate of labeling such a contact a "friend" is not new. Mark Dykeman, in a post on Mashable, asked in September, Is a Social Media Friend Really a Friend?, asking, "Would you trust a social media friend with your money? Your home? Your significant other? Your children? Your life?"

The answer of course is not uniform. Each example listed above has a certain weight of importance, and implied risk. But even if you don't want to casually hand your keys and credit cards over to somebody you have been throwing sheep at on Facebook for two weeks doesn't mean you can't find real connections with people who will help you out.

A few examples:

1. Would you invite a friend you met online to "crash" at your place for a few nights instead of finding a hotel?
2. Would you refer a friend you met online to a job position you found, and introduce them as a trusted candidate?
3. Would you purchase a product and ship it to an online friend in another state without getting paid up front?
4. Would you pay the phone/Internet/electrical bill for an online friend who you knew was short on cash?
5. Would you split a hotel room with an online friend at a conference even if you'd never met?

I use these examples because they are all things I've either done or had done by friends of mine online.

For example, although I had looked high and low for a Nintendo Wii Fit throughout the Bay Area, and on Amazon.com, I had no success in finding one. (See my complaining on FriendFeed) But Jesse Stay, who has been a blogger here over the last two months, and someone I got to know on multiple social networks, let me know his mother has a knack for tracking down the evasive products. Sure enough, on Halloween day, a box came to my office, containing the Wii Fit, and displaying the address of Mrs. Stay, from Massachusetts. My wife and I are now amusing ourselves in acting like we're going to use the Fit to pursue something resembling an exercise program.

In the age of PayPal, pushing money around also has become easier, assuming you have it. If you watch people's comments on Twitter and other networks closely enough, you can sense stress, or, when there are gaps, know if something has impacted their usual schedule. Sometimes, it's a money issue, and reaching out via PayPal, or making a call to the utility that's getting in their way can give them the breathing room to keep going as they were before. I'm not suggesting you start playing charity and laying out thousands of dollars, but in the time where you can lend a helping hand, we've reached the point where online acquaintances are just as deserving as those offline. And if you ask them to pay you back is of course up to you.

Similarly, way back in 2001 a friend I knew from an Apple online stock board said he wanted to fly out to see the MacWorld Expo, but he didn't have a place to stay. Having never met him, I offered my apartment for three nights, and he and I took off to see Steve Jobs in person. I also shared a room at the recent BlogWorld Expo with someone I'd never met.

Why so trusting? A few things. First, I believe people are inherently good, and I've chosen to interact with good people online, who share ideas, are trustworthy and positive to be around. Robert Scoble says "you are defined by who you follow" and if I were following people online that I wouldn't be friends with in the real world, then that is my mistake. You also, thanks to the ease of publishing and dissemination of opinion, have the option of publicly embarrassing or outing an individual who has wronged you, so the incentive to do well and act within accepted guidelines is strong.

Of course, not every friend is equal. Just because almost 2,600 people have chosen to follow my account on Twitter doesn't mean that I am going to give them cash and a place to stay. But for those who I have had many interactions with over time in multiple networks, and traded e-mail or phone calls with, I know I am building relationships that have a potential to transition to real world. That's why I know at some point, I am going to take my wife out and let Drew Olanoff babysit my twins, why I bet my kids will be having playdates with Milan Scoble and Thomas Buchheit, and why I've tried to help find new careers for many people whose blogs I read and whose work I follow. These investments I'm making now are going to be paying off, and I encourage you to take a look at your own online "friends" and see if you too can be a real-world friend to them.

Now Is Not the Time To Scale Back On Social Media

Amidst all the talk of economic recession (or worse) and politics, I have seen an underlying current of people who are tiring of social media, seeing it as "less important" than the bigger world issues, and maybe less interesting than maybe it was three, six or nine months ago. Without doing a dedicated poll myself, my gut feeling is that the reasoning is that while people retrench and worry more about their jobs, their families, their wallets and their future, all the fun of bookmarking, liking, linking and blogging falls to the wayside. But I think this is wrong, period. If anything, the economic weakness should make it more important than ever for companies and individuals to double down on social media, as these new tools have enabled less expensive ways to find like-minded individuals, who just might be your next customer.

The world of marketing, advertising and public relations is changing. It's no longer about finding tricky ways to force prospects to your Web site, your products, your content and your story. Instead, it's about going to where your customers are. And it's very likely that many of them have found solace and community in far-flung places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and FriendFeed, where they are talking with peers, with or without you. Rather than spending tens of thousands of dollars to increase the perception of your brand through print advertising, or sending a check to Google each month to sponsor search keywords, you could devote more time, but much less money, by listening, communicating and participating, bringing a human voice and face to what could previously be seen a static brand.

As the economy tightens and budgets are reduced in response, it makes sense to think differently, to borrow Apple's phrase, and find new ways to reach your prospects and partners less expensively. While not every executive in the boardroom needs to know exactly what Twitter is, they will absolutely understand that you can achieve a higher return on your investment through spending less money, and spending the right amount of time in more targeted areas, where you can attract and retain business, whether these communities are physical or virtual.


Additionally, the typical social media user is a more sophisticated buyer than the general populace. They aren't interested in your "spray and pray" methods of e-mail blasts, run of site banner advertising, or even your impersonal PR pitches. They expect and demand personalization and knowledge of themselves, by you, as an individual. They want to be wooed and to be given a seat at the table when it comes to making suggestions about your product, where you should sell it, and at what price. With proper utilization of social media, there lies a greater sense of community between the buyer and the seller, the customer and the brand, making it a collaborative effort where both parties will work together to ensure a successful transaction takes place.

There's no question that those folks who have been using social media as a time killer or strictly for recreation, to distract from work, might find their time better spent. But that's true with all things, as activities can cross from hobby to obsession, or from utility to distraction.

What has happened in the world of social media over the last few years is the growth of micro-communities whose members can be reached in new ways, regardless of location or time. To cite changes in the macroeconomic climate, or the political climate, as reasons to back away from this growing evolution in communication and marketing is short-sighted. Those companies that can take advantage of the reduced costs of customer communication, acquisition and support will extend the gap over those who sit on the sidelines.

See Also:

• BuzzGain: Can Social Media Marketing Scale is the Wrong Question to Ask
• Web Strategist: Intel’s Community Marketing: Fishing Where The Fish Are

The Future of Social Media Is Mobile, Unified and Transparent

This morning, I had the pleasure of taking part in a podcast with Wayne Sutton and Kipp Bodnarf for their Talk Social News program. During the conversation, we discussed how to find time to participate in multiple social networks, how today's technology luddites might some day consume information, using RSS, and what the recent economic turbulence means for today's startups and tomorrow's entrepreneurs. One of the questions I've been mulling in my head is the future, and what glimpses we have today, in regards to what tomorrow's social media tools will have, barring the true development of anything dramatic, like teleportation, or bending of the time/space continuum.

Mobile

In my opinion, the advent and adoption of mini-computers masquerading as cell phones is the first big step, and one we are seeing in a big way with the market share growth of the iPhone, the newest Blackberry models, and the potential of Google's Android platform.

Just yesterday, my wife and I brought our twins to her mother's house, and I was able to show my 80-year-old mother in law how, with my phone, I could take a photo, and e-mail it to her, wirelessly. I showed her how I could access all my e-mail accounts, how I could watch baseball playoff highlights in high quality, or access all my bookmarks, so when they were added to my laptop, they would reach the phone as well. And when I told her the iPhone started at $300, she was surprised it was so low.

As iPhones and other "true Web" capable mobile devices become a bigger part of how we consume and interact with the Web, so too will they become a greater part of how we consume and interact with social media specifically. Your social network then becomes less some thing that you interact with just when in front of a desktop or your laptop, but from anywhere, helping to bridge the gap between "following friends" and "real life friends". Consequentially, the mobile interface to sites like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Social Median, Strands and others will be just as important as the standard Web GUI.

Unified

I also believe you will really start to see a tying together of friends and profiles across the different networks. Many different sites now have ways for you to import your contacts from your many different address books and e-mail accounts, and others integrate with Facebook, so when your friends on that service sign up, you're automatically connected. But it's not as seamless as it could be, and adding the same friends over and over again can get tiresome when new services arrive - not to mention copying and pasting your personal profile and attributes repeatedly.

What should happen, and will in due time, I believe, is that groups like OpenSocial or others, will find a solution by which you gain a friends repository, identifiable by your single user name, which checks against the database and auto-populates your friend base, assuming they have given permission. Similarly, when joining a new network, I should be able to point that network to a central profile I have built, which has all my activity, from Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and the rest, and would pull my data down from those services, rather than making me add them each one by one.

Transparent

I also believe that with growth of professional services like LinkedIn and Plaxo, and increased awareness of tools to derive a person's background, there will be greater transparency and easier discovery of a person's background. I should quickly and easily know a person's professional profile, and their external online activity, which would take the guesswork out of some initial relationships. While some might say this would be too much a breach of privacy, and that anonymity is a much-treasured aspect of the Web, the Generation Y Millennials have no such expectations, and are all too willing to put their data out there. Tomorrow's tools will capitalize on this and further blur your online persona with that you use at the office or at home.

I don't want to pontificate on smaller technology aspects, such as increased video usage, location awareness, or even real-time language translations, although each will be playing a part in these future services. Those are for the experts in their respective field. But we can see these aspects evolving. The world of social media is going to be unified, transparent and mobile (or location independent). Those that can best capitalize on the unification of data, and avoid the traditional walled garden approach will be the winners.

The Valley's Proponents Become Its Critics in Hard Times

Friday's stock market roller coaster was one to remember. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average at one point down more than 500 points early in the session, again, a colleague and I headed to lunch just before noon with the market down more than 400. As we ate, the TV screens alerted us to a market rally that saw the market reverse course, racing beyond the break-even mark to crest at almost 200 points up, only to fall back down to a loss of more than 100. In between bites and conversation, I'd pass along a report: "Down 200. Down 100. Even. Up 50. Up 150. Even again." My latest position in Apple, created just Friday morning, at one point was up 10 percent in the space of hours - making me feel good, if just for a day.

The rise and fall euphoria and despair that we've all seen as the market rises and falls (and falls and falls in recent weeks) is not uncommon. The crowd mentality sees us piling on to negativity when things are bad, and blocking out risks when things are good. But even as things have gotten a lot more tight in our own personal financial accounts and 401ks, banks have gotten wobbly, and credit has gotten unstable, many of the major tenets that saw the Web 2.0 world lauded just a few months ago are still there - namely the ability to start a new company for much less, to attract a solid user base, and reduce burn rates to a level that wouldn't require significant funding. This means that even in times of scarcity, there's room for innovative ideas. And for those companies that already raised sufficient funds, or who have achieved profitability, their major focus should be hitting product milestones and gaining revenue, rather than worrying about keeping the doors open.

With the near extinguishing of companies entering the public markets in the last twelve months, combined with VCs saying funding will be tight going forward, and valuations lighter, the squeeze will be most noticed by companies looking to get the next series of capital, or those who find acquirers won't be offering the big numbers they had hoped. Many companies will be proposing hiring freezes to slow the burn, or letting non-essential people go.

But with that said, the technology advances that have let companies get off the ground for less mean the pressure from VCs and board members to turn thousands into millions and millions into billions is less than it was five years ago, when we saw a similar slowdown. Even Twitter, which has one of the highest profiles of "pre-revenue" companies, has only raised $15 million, a small fraction of the hundreds of millions given to Webvan, Kozmo.com and other high-profile Web 1.0 flameouts. Seesmic, which visibly laid off seven yesterday, also has raised a conservative $12 million or so in two rounds, and Silicon Valley darling, FriendFeed, has only raised $5 million in its initial round.

It has only taken a few months of bad news on Wall Street to see some of the most visible proponents of Web 2.0 startups start to pick on them and demand significant changes. But the calls for a route to revenue and product quality should have been there when times were good, not just now.

Most of today's Web companies don't need staffs of hundreds. They don't need seven-figure marketing budgets. And many are cutting costs on their technology infrastructures by turning to services like Amazon's S3. So the burn rates of years ago have lessened dramatically.

What recessions do is weed out the bad ideas from the good and move timetables. Great ideas continue to be supported and funded. During the last recession, LinkedIn was founded, in 2002. Google went from being a curiosity to a world leader, going public in 2004 after years of slowness for Web companies looking to reach the market. And in 2003, MySpace was started, following Friendster's 2002 debut.

That the economy's struggles will have far-reaching impact is not under dispute. But for Web companies that have been smart about keeping their costs low, and their revenue and profits in sight, they will power through. To prematurely call for their demise and dance on the grave of those that don't survive is not the way to go.

See also:

Dare Obasanjo: TechCrunch Turns Into F-----Company 2.0
The Inquisitr: Paging Chicken Little - The Sky Isn’t Falling

Spokeo: Ad-based Service Was a Failure, Declares Web 2.0 "Over"

A year ago, Spokeo entered my view as a service that would let you follow all your friends' updates across multiple social networks. At the time, the idea that you could see all their updates, from MySpace to Friendster, as well as follow all your RSS feeds in one place, was quite compelling. But even then, I said, "there's always the question of "How will they make money?" Not surprisingly, their approach of building a large user base, and slapping ads all over the place, gathering the pennies where they fell, simply didn't scale.

Their timing was also impeccably poor, as just two weeks after my initial post, FriendFeed debuted, ushering in a new level of expectations for social following and engagement.

Tonight, in a blog post by Harrison Tang, the company's founder, he writes that "as most of you would agree, the Web 2.0 era is long over", recounting that the company "ran ads for 3 months in the beginning of 2008, and we quickly realized that even if we grow the traffic by 100 times, we still couldn’t cover our basic costs."

In what's a complete 180 from their initial free model open to all who grabbed beta invites, Spokeo has revamped, making itself a premium play, and has flipped the data on its head, being less about tracking friends, and instead, tailoring it toward HR professionals who want to do some detective work on potential hires. (See: www.spokeo.com/hr)

This new model actually falls further into what people often called "Spook-eo", as the service can dredge up items you might have thought had been long since tucked away in the Web's archives. But Spokeo, after having launched with big expectations, has clearly scaled back, and is facing a new reality head on, trying to salvage something. As Harrison wrote, "Advertisers aren’t dumb, and they won’t pay for ads that don’t work forever." I've been outspoken in my distaste for display ads on Web sites, and think they're not the solution to all that ails the Web. Even services and blog networks more mature than that of Spokeo are going to struggle as ad budgets dry up, and differentiation decreases.


An example of an update within Spokeo's new interface

If anything, Spokeo has never been one to shy away from questionable publicity. You might recall in the wake of Google's auto-friending debacle last December, Spokeo made no changes and held their ground. But I don't know that I was waiting for them to declare Web 2.0 "over". Maybe the "ads + free" model is on thin ice, but Web 2.0 is and was about more than that. Should be interesting to see if Spokeo can turn the corner with their new approach, and if HR professionals will come their way instead of relying solely on LinkedIn. I think they'll find this new road a struggle as well.

There is No Social Media Overload

Every day, there are more and more great services to investigate in the world of social media. Each one breaks new ground in terms of features, focus or user interface. There are many different sites that target general social networking, some are for business, some are for dating, some are for microblogging, and others for service aggregation. And there will be many more. While some are calling for a pause in the innovation, somewhat fatigued by the implied redundancy or overwhelmed by chasing down comments and conversations in new places, it's worth noting there's time in the day to manage a good number of sites, and not all the winners have yet been crowned.

To have a full deck of social media tools, you essentially need the following:

• 1 or more blogs that you manage.
• 1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
• 1 or more microblogging identities.
• 1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
• 1 or more accounts on a social network.
• 1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
  

(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)

For me, this means I blog here, use Google Reader, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and FriendFeed as my core applications for each category. But below these headliners are others.

For RSS, I also use Shyftr and liked AssetBar before it went away. I've tried Bloglines, FeedEachOther and NewsGator as well. There are also tools that interact with RSS, like Toluu, which helps you find feeds your friends like and integrates with Google Reader, and the sites dedicated to finding the most shared items in Google Reader, like ReadBurner, RSSMeme and Feedheads. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner)

For microblogging, beyond Twitter, you have Identi.ca, Plurk, and now, Rejaw. I'm signed up at each, but use Twitter primarily, copying posts to Identi.ca, via Posty. I need to check out Rejaw more, but am no expert.

For business networking, there's also Plaxo, which has morphed into a lifestreaming application.

For social networking, many still use MySpace, or Friendster, but Facebook has the momentum and the development on its side. Orkut never got the traction expected.

As for lifestreaming and aggregation, I am absolutely overweighted here, and I enjoy it. Justin Korn referred to it as "Super Kickass Social Network Following Power", but if you're interested, it's fairly easy to be engaged on sites like FriendFeed, Social Median and Strands all at once, like I'm trying to do.

I like FriendFeed because it easily pulls in my activity from around the Web and has a sharp community with good conversations and hiding. I like Social Median because it lets me just see news and posts on topics I pick or from people I follow. I like Strands because it has similar elements to FriendFeed, but more filtering and some good potential. I also know it can continue to improve because it’s early. Just in the last 36 hours, I've gone from being a nothing on Strands to having more than 100 people whom I can interact with.

Below this crust of leaders, you also have smaller sites like Yokway and LetsProve, where I'm registered, but haven't done much of late. FriendBinder doesn't seem to have taken off either, and BlogRize, though interesting, got quiet fast, and seems to have gone away, as did Mergelab. The truth is that we don't know which sites are going to win, and it makes sense to be registered everywhere and active on those places where you find the best community and the best content.

Of course, just because I sign up for something, or find something, doesn't mean that you're obligated to try it out. Not all sites are for everyone. But I'm far from being overloaded with Social Media. You just have to find balance, time, and keep remembering there is no quota and you don't have to read everything. Contrary to some belief, I'm not constantly on each site. I just read quickly, decide quickly and respond quickly. None of these sites is a real big time sink, unless you force yourself to read everything. It's easier to let your friends decide the best pieces, and for you to rely on search tools to get the rest, whether it be through Twitter Search, or pre-determined Google blog searches.

The only way you get social media overload is if you don't manage it well, just like you can get RSS overload or e-mail overload, or so I've heard. Even as there are more services to engage with, the number of hours you have to work with them is still the same. So do check out as many as you think have potential, and stick with the ones that offer you the community you're looking for, the engagement you need, and the best feature set. You'll find your niche.

See Also:

• Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.
• My Social Media Consumption Workflow
• Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

Facebook Still Banning Aliases to Avoid Becoming Fakebook

That Facebook has an itchy trigger finger when banning users or applications for assumed wrongs is not new or a mystery. People have been kicked off the site for adding friends too quickly, for using fake names, or trying to export data from the walled garden social network. And Facebook's adherence to this policy, especially when it comes to pseudonyms, puts them at odds with just about every other popular Web service out there. Just last night, a former colleague of mine, and now a Web friend, found himself on the outside looking in.

Vicky Chaudry (or Chau), whom I worked with at my current company from 2002 to 2005, is now the founder and CEO of StartupNewz, a Digg-like service focused on startup and technology news. To better highlight his immersion into Web 2.0 and social networking, Vicky took to calling himself Vic Podcaster, a name which has served him well, on LinkedIn, where he has more than 500 connections, on Twitter, where he is followed by more than 1,150, and on FriendFeed, where he follows almost 1,300. His pseudonym also didn't seem to stop his ability to get into the recent TechCrunch August Capital party (see pictures on Flickr) or the F8 afterparty for Facebook developers last week.


But eight months after opening a Facebook account under his name, Vic Podcaster, Vicky tried to log in to the service last night, to find his account had been disabled, "because the name it was registered under was a fake". Amusingly, this screen is surrounded by a note that "Everyone can join", and doesn't offer any kind of helpful link to challenge the ruling.


In the FriendFeed discussion that ensued after Vicky told everyone he had been banned, the once-banned Robert Scoble said, "Facebook sucks for just this reason.", while Jesse Stay suggested "One thing Facebook does still need to do, but I argue this is a minor thing, is make sure a human is reviewing disabled accounts before they get disabled."

Vicky's clearly not the only person using an alias on Facebook today. My high school acquaintance Bill Parnell is going by the name of Biznill Parnorell. There's even a user who friended me by the name of Daily Contempt. Surely that's not their given name?

I've been giving a lot of thought of late to the migration away from nicknames and more toward real names, especially as people are taking ownership of their blog posts, microupdates and comments across the Web. In most cases, users of apps like Facebook and FriendFeed are using their own given names, first and last, unless the user name is already taken. Facebook clearly didn't like Vic's changing his name to "Vic Podcaster", although LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed and GMail had no problems with it. But what constitutes fake? If Robert Scoble changed his login to Robert Scobleizer, would he be banned again? And while Michael Arrington uses his real name on Facebook, its the TechCrunch brand he's aligned with on Twitter. What if he went by Michael TechCrunch on Facebook? Grounds for banning?


Vic Podcaster Still Lives On LinkedIn
Aliases aren't the only reason you can get banned from Facebook, of course. Scoble was banned for using an early version of Plaxo software, and many have been banned for spam-like behavior. Alex Hammer, who I've written about before, e-mailed me three weeks ago, saying, "I'm working to get reinstated back into Facebook because I added too many friends too quickly." In their defense, he adds, he was warned.

So who's right here? Is Facebook wrong to stop people from using aliases, or are the other sites that have more permissive rules the ones who are making the mistake? Should Facebook have waited eight full months before banning Vicky? Couldn't they tell by his activity on the site that he's a real person with real connections? It seems to me at the very least, a human should have reached out to him and offered a way to change his last name to get it within guidelines.

The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand

As the world of online "friends" is getting increasingly blurred, and many of us are joining social network after social network, expanding our realm of friends to mean much more than just those we know in real life, artificial rules of etiquette are being created for when you follow someone or add them as a friend, and when you don't. And when two people have different, unequal rules, there is a potential for conflict, or hurt feelings, even when we have the option to step back and realize this is all very silly. No one hard and fast rule works for everybody, and I would expect that the "rules" are different for each network, given the impact "following" can mean.

This whole ruckus about "You didn't follow me! I'm going to unsubscribe!" led me to playfully suggest a new approach this evening:


(See the FriendFeed response to my Tweet here)

The issue of who to friend started well before social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace took hold, and before Twitter and FriendFeed changed the game in terms of how adding somebody as a friend could open a floodgate of information.

Early demands on who to add as a friend were problematic even in the early days of AOL Instant Messenger. Making my AIM address open to family and close friends was one thing, but soon, casual acquaintances would want my AIM address, and logging on to the service left me at their whim for contacting me, or seeing my status. Soon, I was hiding my service, pretending to be away from the desk, or blocking the very same people who still thought we were AIM friends.

With Friendster, the issue of "friending" again came up. Would I accept the friend request from a college roommate I really wasn't all that fond of? What about if there was a girl I had a crush on, who I wanted to follow, but I didn't want to "friend" in case she figured it out? (Complicated, I know)

Suddenly, the issue of friending became less about wanting to actually follow real friends, or peers, and instead, became an arms race - to get the most followers, to follow the most people, to rise up a leaderboard, or feel some kind of achievement because you could claim a friend as a household name.

There became issues with Facebook only accepting 5,000 friends. Twitter saw people set up rules to auto-follow anyone who followed them, even as it became common to follow thousands or tens of thousands. FriendFeed has seen many do the same, even though to follow a person there means not just Twitter updates, but blogs, photos, videos, and dozens more services, in addition to integrated comments.

Soon, the concept of auto-following, and gaining prominence over following a huge number, or being followed by a big name became the norm. While it might make sense for a Robert Scoble or a Duncan Riley to do it, for the rest of us, the firehose of data can be choking. And by opting out of the automatic following process, we can be called on the carpet for not acting the way others expect us to.

A few key examples:

Rahsheen Porter:
The A-List Doesn’t Care About Your FriendFeed
echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null
FriendFeed: Should I unsubscribe from people who don't follow me back ?
Pixel Bits:
Subscribing, unsubscribing, do you like me? Do you hate me?

This issue is highlighted by services which show you the disparity between those you follow, and who follows you. For Twitter, there are sites like Twitter Karma and Less Friends, and recently, one was developed for FriendFeed, called FriendVenn. Of note, I've used Twitter Karma to get my lists in sync, but haven't been able to use FriendVenn, as it's limited to 3,000 total connections so far, and I'm ahead of that mark, even if I didn't follow anybody on FriendFeed at all.

There's nothing wrong with seeing the disparity in bulk, rather than on a one by one basis, but it's more of a curiosity than a call to action in my mind.

On Twitter, I used to be quite selective about who I would follow. But over time, thanks to the improvement of Summize and Twitter's frequent downtimes, I'm not using the Web interface to watch Tweets, but only to send notes. Now, there's really zero impact to me to following a bazillion people. If it makes them feel good, then I have no problem adding them to my stream. But in reality, unless they say my name, or a search query I'm watching in TweetDeck, I'll probably never see their updates.

FriendFeed is a different story altogether. FriendFeed's best environment is the Web interface, where you see all updates. A FriendFeed follow is a lot "heavier" than a Twitter follow, as you get all the updates from all the disparate services. This means that while you can casually follow tens of thousands on Twitter, it can be a bit overwhelming to follow even a few hundred on FriendFeed, unless you're absolutely comfortable with missing out on some updates. As a result, I've been a little slower to follow people there, even as my in box on some days can be flooded with new followers.

The way I choose to follow people on FriendFeed was first, people I knew, or engaged with elsewhere, second, following people who engaged in my activity through comments and on the feeds of the others I followed, and third, friends that those I follow engaged with, and whom I shared interests.

This more tentative approach means I have only 300+ people I follow on FriendFeed instead of 3,100 or more. I believe that by adding more and more, the fun and engagement will surely be lost, just as it was on Twitter's Web interface when I added so many people, or in Facebook, where I get new friend requests daily from people I'll probably never meet. I expect there are probably some good 250 to 500 new people who I'll find interesting on FriendFeed who might be following me now, but I want to make that choice after seeing their activity, not just on automatic.

Am I really going to overweight my social networks with ladies? Probably not, as fun as that sounds. But am I going to overweight every network with every single follower I possibly can, again, probably not. The way I use Twitter and FriendFeed or Facebook or LinkedIn or any other service that relies so heavily on connections is the way that I do it, period. It's not necessarily the way you should do it, and no one right way is right for all people. But if there is a point where I'm not following you, and you are following me, it's probably not personal, and it shouldn't be made personal. To each their own.

FriendFeed Friday Tips #7: Who Are These People, Anyway?

By popular demand, I've been asked by other FriendFeed users to highlight how I use the popular social lifestreaming site. So far the series has covered the "Hide" function, the bookmarklet, advanced search, how to integrate with Google Talk, how you can incorporate comments and determine an item's original source. Today, figuring out who you're engaging with on the service.

So far, unlike most social networks out there, FriendFeed doesn't utilize a person's profile as the central nervous system around which the service is built. There's no way to post my location, my age, my job title, my birthday, my religion, or marital status. For some, this is surely a blessing. For others, it seems like a feature gap. Filling that gap, until FriendFeed does it in the future, is a GreaseMonkey script developed by Hao Chen. But for non-Firefox users or those who don't play with scripts, you can use FriendFeed's stream to get clues.

FriendFeed's stream consists of a collection of updates from disparate services around the Web, from you and your friends. The nomenclature, as discussed in last week's tip, consists of service icons, an active verb, and the service itself.

Clicking on any of these icons reduces the total stream to show only updates from a specific service. For example, I can click the orange RSS icon and see only blog entries from my friends. I can click the Twitter logo and see only Tweets. But if, over time, I've started following a number of people who are friends online but not in real life, as is common, the very best way to find out who they are is by showing only updates from LinkedIn. If your contacts are using LinkedIn, and have registered it with FriendFeed, there will be at least one entry, and if they update, you'll see if they changed jobs or got promoted.


The URL to show all LinkedIn updates from your friends is:
http://friendfeed.com/?service=linkedin.

The URL to show all LinkedIn updates from people throughout FriendFeed is:
http://friendfeed.com/public?service=linkedin.
(Have at it, recruiters!)

From this, I found that Alan Steele, formerly of Mergelab, is now the VP of Engineering at Identity.net, Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner is now the Community Manager and Evangelist at MyStrands and Atul Arora is the Director of Product Management at Vimo, for starters.



Yes, it turns out that most of the geeks who participate online are also geeks in real life. That's not a surprise. But rather than just knowing somebody from their blog or their tweets, or even their photos from Flickr, with a single click, you can browse all the titles on LinkedIn and see what these people do in the real world. And just like with any other FriendFeed entry, you can like a LinkedIn entry or make a comment. It's a great way to congratulate somebody on the social ladder as they move up the corporate ladder.

As for more MySpace/Facebook looking profiles, check out Hao Chen's scripts or... just wait. I bet FriendFeed will solve this soon enough.

Social Media Experts are the New Webmasters

In the mid to late 1990s, perception had it there was no more exciting a career title than that of Webmaster. It seemed everybody wanted to be one, and some called it the "Job of the Future". As a Webmaster, your code manipulation could change the look and flow of a Web site with each publish, and make Web pages spring up overnight, complete with hyperlinks, animated GIFs and comment forms with basic JavaScript. As seemingly every company needed a Web presence, the demand for somebody who could write HTML and handle Web operations filled them with incredible power. But as years passed, the title fell by the wayside, and you're now no more likely to find somebody with Webmaster on their business card as you are to find cars that come with cassette decks standard.

In the ensuing decade or so, the Internet has become part of the landscape, not the mystery it once was. The Webmaster position similarly faded to the background, and many companies tend to have portions of IT and Marketing share the load, outsourcing the Web design function to an outside agency. Larger companies keep the Web expertise in house, but don't call their employees by the dreaded "W" word.

As the Internet has changed, so too have the buzzwords. As one friend recently noted, simply having a blog isn't the differentiator it was a few years ago. Now, just about everybody has one (or more), so making you a blogger isn't anything special unto itself. But where the new frontier lies is where I see people positioning themselves - in social media.

Social media is a loose term that largely relies on user generated content, whether it be social networking, forums, web logs, social news or bookmarking sites. Those of us who have embraced the blogging boom have no doubt leveraged these tools: Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and the like, for starters. But I'm constantly seeing people giving me invites on LinkedIn saying their title is as a social media expert or social media consultant, or running into profiles online where social media is featured prominently, and their numbers are increasing.

I'm afraid that for the most part, their efforts to rebrand as social media experts will be short-lived and futile. Saying one is an expert in utilizing social media sites is akin to brand one's self as a "Web browsing expert", an "e-mail expert", or a "telephone specialist". While some will capitalize on the technophobes and newbies who don't know the difference between MySpace and NASA, or Hotmail and Hot Pockets, I believe it makes more sense that social media is spread thinly across all aspects of activity, be it a company's marketing activities, human resources, communications, and business development. Pretty soon, with any luck, social media won't be any scarier than opening a Web browser or writing a simple blog post.

So what should these so-called social media experts do to find real work? Some of them might get lucky. Every big analyst firm should have a social media expert on hand to help train the slow adopters, at least until they get the point the analysts have to change titles again. But to me, saying you're a social media specialist or a social media expert doesn't amount to a whole lot. What else do you do? What do you do really? There's no money to be made Digging up stories, hitting the StumbleUpon button or refreshing FriendFeed or Twitter, after all. Social Media is simply part of the landscape, in the background. Social media offers tools for communications and information sharing, but it's a means to an end, not the end itself.

Like the surge in Webmasters rose and fell, similar will be the rise and fall of people who flash you a business card with the term "social media" on it. It's the 2008 version of the Aeron chair and Foosball table so common in the days of the Web 1.0 startup. If you've got social media on your card, think about what else you do. Are you a trainer or a marketer? Are you a PR person, or an IT expert? Don't lose those talents, and be sure you make social media part of the landscape, not part of the headline, as it's not the tools you use, it's how you do it and what you're looking to get accomplished.

Plaxo Pulse Making Strides, But to What End?

In the spirit of unifying comments from disparate services across the Web, Plaxo and Disqus made a strong announcement Tuesday, giving users the ability to have comments made within their lifestreaming service, Plaxo Pulse, to flow back to the original blog. The company's VP of Marketing, John McCrea, eagerly said the addition was a natural response to the discussion a few weeks ago around fractured comments and how many bloggers wanted to maintain a central repository for activity. And it is indeed a good addition, but I still need a big push before I'm on the Plaxo bandwagon.

There's no question Plaxo Pulse has been an interesting development within the service over the last year. But the company's origins, as a business contacts database, similar to LinkedIn, have led to it being seen as a business tool. For me, the contacts I have in Plaxo, thanks to many invites over the years, are largely colleagues, business contacts, or partners - in contrast to more social databases, including Facebook, Twitter or FriendFeed, which are comprised of Web peers, casual acquaintances and friends.


Some shared items in the Plaxo Pulse feed

Due to this basic difference, while I have the willingness to share my Digg, Del.icio.us, Last.fm, Google Reader Shared items and other activity on some services, I'm much less likely to do so in Plaxo, and by extension, I would also be uncomfortable offering comments on Plaxo contacts' blog posts, etc.

What Plaxo is asking me to do, by asking me to start streaming my content in Pulse and interact with contacts, is to proverbially mix business with pleasure, in a way that will certainly muddy up how I'm interpreted, as contacts start to see me on a casual, personal level, and not through the usual, more professional routes of communication. While I'm certain the company is under intense pressure to leverage the contact databases they have on their site and become a full-fledged social network, like Facebook, I feel that making a shift of this kind runs contrary to their original intentions, making it extremely difficult to succeed.


Plaxo lets you distinguish between family, friends and work.
This isn't to say Plaxo hasn't considered the problem of making such a dramatic shift in the public eye without losing its existing customer base. No doubt with the issues I brought up in mind, Plaxo has enabled categories of contacts, from "Business" to "Friends" and "Family", making it possible that I could show my personal streaming data only to Friends and not Business contacts, for instance. That's a smart move, one I expect other lifestreaming services to borrow. But not even this granularity solves the basic problem of what the site is known for and what they're now trying to be. Putting wings on a car doesn't make it an airplane.

Just because a business network starts to add social functionality doesn't make it a social network who would be a willing audience for my other activity on the Web. And that goes for LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for showing connections to others, for doing research on companies, and keeping tabs on contacts who change companies. But I wouldn't want to take what is essentially an online resume being viewed by colleagues, recruiters and potential employers, and start to crowd that data with the songs I like, the posts I write, and the stories I Digg. Even if all my comments were kept in a single place, why would I want to start that conversation there anyway?

So the core question exists: Can Plaxo make a successful transition away from acting as a business contacts repository and into a social network with lifestreaming capabilities? It takes more than simple aggregation to become a destination site, and while I respect the efforts that have been made so far, and their optimistic direction, I'm quite tentative to take the plunge. Are we instead moving to one massive database with friends, family and business across all services, or is the delineation I still have in my head as to which site does what still valid?

LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel

How Select Tech Titans Stack Up (Click for larger image)

Last night, LinkedIn rolled out a major upgrade to the professionally-oriented social network and career/recruiting database, adding new company profiles, giving corporations the same kind of dedicated page to their background as their individual employees have had for roughly five years. (Here's mine.) While corporate profiles have been around forever, LinkedIn adds "special sauce" through its large user database, determining where employees come from and leave to, what other companies they are connected to, and who may recently have changed positions or joined the company. Good stuff.

The new company profiles on LinkedIn are a gold mine for reporters who want to get data beyond what the PR guys may want to dish out. (See: LinkedIn Is a Paradise for Smart Reporters)

Want the average age of an employee? A good estimate is on LinkedIn. Want to know if there is a high level of turnover, and people don't stay long? LinkedIn has that too. It also can provide hints as to whether a company is so strong that folks aren't leaving at all, or if they are leaving in exodus. And if you peer closely enough, you can see the Silicon Valley carousel, as employees move from company to company in search for the next big thing.

You can see employees move from PayPal to Google, Yahoo! or LinkedIn. You can see Friendster employees went to Yahoo! and Zazzle, or from Napster to Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. And if you think Google is getting all the good employees out there, there's no question they get their share, but so far, it looks like Facebook is getting a lot of new hires, and nobody's leaving - a boomtime for the social networking giant.

Interestingly, due to Apple's tenure, and the company's rising from the ashes with the return of Steve Jobs, you can see employees that once left the company have returned, having never lost the Mac religion. You can also see longer median tenures at the more established companies, like Microsoft and Intel, who also feature an older employee base.

Gender-wise, men dominate LinkedIn data for the tech industry, with between 60% and 70% of all employees at the companies I selected. Could that be the case, or is there an overweighting of men who use LinkedIn, compared to the true employee base? Maybe it's both?

LinkedIn opening up this data will keep company marketeers and PR on the alert to see how their data is being portrayed, just as they should be watching their coverage on Wikipedia, for in this case, it's their employees' collective data that is pushing the details, without a filter, and just maybe, the truth will reveal more than they had ever imagined. I know I'll be spending a lot more time poking around LinkedIn now myself.