Ask The Experts.

YouTube Video - Ask The Experts

A bit of a rant about al those self appointed, so called "experts".
Whether they be in the workplace, on online.

Twitter and Facebook - Wot no link?

This post was originally written for my FaceBook page:

So, it appears & please correct me if i'm wrong, that i can no longer link my Twitter feed to Facebook. Unless, that is, i have a special "Page" account, which is only available for business', bands, celebrities etc.

I've even tried removing the Twitter app & reinstalling it. FB says that the accounts are now linked, but nothing shows up on my FB profile.
So, why do FB allow you to get this far if i'm now not allowed to share my Tweets? And why on earth don't they tell us that they've changed things?

I noticed the other day that my Tweets weren't now appearing on FB.
I realise that this will probably make some people happy, especially if they also follow me on Twitter & see my posts duplicated. But, for me, this was a very useful tool.
Like most people who use both Twitter & FB, i have many different followers & friends on the different accounts. So, being able to link accounts enabled me to communicate with both sets of people, without having to post in two separate places myself. Something i'm certainly not going to bother doing very often.

I use FB in a different way to Twitter. As, i'm sure, do many people.
I have an iPhone & have both Twitter & FB apps installed onto it. But, i find it so much easier to use Twitter on the iPhone, than i do FB. I use the FB app as little as possible as it happens. Which is why i relied on linking the accounts.
I only tend to use FB when i'm actually sitting down at a computer, which probably isn't as often as people might think. I use my iPhone a lot, especially during the day & tend to log onto FB only during the evening. There are obviously exceptions to this "rule", like now!

So, by changing this FB have taken away some of my connectivity & there was me thinking that social networking was all about connections & interactivity?
Or, is it, as i suspect it is, a move to get you to upgrade your account in an effort to sell more advertising & make money? After all, the media has been full of items about the current value of both Twitter & FB recently.

Maybe i'm just being an old cynic & maybe i'm completely wrong about these changes & just haven't figured out how to get around them yet?
After all, some changes were made this week on FB & meant that most people needed to update their settings to enable you to see all posts, by all of your friends here.
Once again, this wasn't advertised by FB & i only found out via a link posted by a friend here on FB.

Why do some sites, companies etc make it so hard for their users?
And why do they keep breaking something that isn't actually broken?

Anyway, rant over & if you don't "see" me on FB quite so much in the future, at least you now know why.

Update:
Well, my Twitter feed is now showing up once again onto Facebok, which is good news.
Still no idea as to why this happened. I noticed that other peoples Tweets were starting to show up, over the past week and then, all of a sudden and with no warning and no idea why, my Tweets re-appeared.
Weird huh?

AudioBoo - Favourite Waste Of Time?

AudioBoo - Favourite Waste Of Time?

Talking Twitter and online communities.

2010 - My Year In Social Media.

After writing my last post for this blog, i started to think about what i had done in the world of social media during 2010. I have been using, what we would call social media, since 2006 and i wondered if 2010 had been any different to the previous years.
So, in the interests of curiosity, i decided to do a little research and thought it only right that i post my findings on a social media site for all to see.

Of course, one of the things that i did do in 2010 was to set up this Social Media Journeys blog. Rather than go through the reasons why all over again, here is a YouTube video i made at the time explaining why.

What i thought i'd do, is to go through the main social media sites that i use and discuss them separately.

First: YouTube.
YouTube was the first social media site that i really got involved with, in August 2006. Yes, i had dabbled with other sites, but none that i could get very excited about.
In 2010 i posted 119 videos on YouTube. My total number of videos on YouTube is now approaching 700 by the way.
This actually surprised me, because i felt that i had slowed down my video output during 2010. But, as i'm sure you can work out yourself, this still averages out at over 2 videos per week. Not a bad total at all.
One of reasons for this higher than expected number, is the Road Trip i did in California, with fellow YouTubers in April and May of 2010. That trip has produced over 20 separate videos alone.
YouTube is still a site that i have a great deal of fondness for, but i do find myself spending less and less time there and also finding myself watching less and less videos there too.
I still intend to make and post videos, mainly because i still really enjoy doing so. Long may that continue.

Next: My personal blog - Moose Musings.
During 2010 i posted 238 posts to this blog. Now, that may sound rather a lot. But, i do use my personal blog as a kind of collection point for all of my social media ramblings. This includes my YouTube videos, AudioBoos and posts from this Social Media Journeys blog.
After taking all of those posts out of the equation, i reckon that i actually only wrote around 40 unique posts for Moose Musings. That's still getting towards one a week, which is about what i might have expected. Especially given all my other online activities.
I know a lot of people have their own personal websites to collect all of their online output and that is something that i have considered. But, for moment at least, i intend to continue with using Moose Musings as a kind of one stop shop for my social media ramblings.
One thing i would like to do in 2011 is more writing. I have noticed that my blogging has tended to decrease, especially towards the end of 2011. But, i know that i can put that down to the next social media site i'm going to mention.

Next: AudioBoo.
I first started using AudioBoo in early 2009. I used it for around 6 months and then did what so many of us do, i stopped using the site and, more or less, forgot about it.
Fast forward to September of 2010 and i noticed that several of my online friends had recently started to post podcasts on AudioBoo themselves. As you can imagine, this re-awakened by interest in the site. After all, if they were using AudioBoo, maybe it's time i went back and had a look at it myself?
Since then i have posted 74 Boos onto the site! So, i think you can safely say that i'm well and truly back on AudioBoo.
I have found it so quick and easy to use, especially with my iPhone. I can podcast from pretty much anywhere, which is one of the beauties of the site. I can think of a topic and within 15 minutes, my AudioBoo is uploaded and available for anyone to listen to. That is certainly not the case, for me anyway, with either YouTube, or Blogger.
Since September i have certainly found myself blogging less and podcasting more, for the reasons i've just mentioned. I expect this will continue into 2011.
If you've not tried AudioBoo why not give it a go? You may well become hooked, like so many others have.

Well, those are the sites where i post the most real content. But, of course i also use several other social media and networking sites as well.
Facebook and Twitter are sites that i use frequently every day. I have been on both since 2008 and strangely enough, they are both sites that i resisted for a while, before being convinced by others to try.

I use Twitter a lot and now find it an invaluable way of keeping in touch with online and real life friends, finding interesting videos, articles, breaking news and people. It is also, like Facebook, a great way of linking your own social media output.
Twitter was certainly a huge help to me after the fire on Hastings Pier, in October. I was able to link my online output very quickly and get almost instant response/feedback from many sources.
Another aspect of Twitter that i like is being able to post photos, via such apps/sites as TwitPic.
Apart from my emails, Twitter is the first thing that i turn to in the morning. I think that shows how much it has crept into my life.

Facebook, on the other hand, is something that i've grown into during 2010.
Even after being dragged there in 2008, i was still to be convinced about the site. That feeling still persisted at the start of 2010. But, i'm now coming around and find myself using the site more and more.
Strangely enough, it is the local aspect of Facebook that has helped me to enjoy it more. I use the site just as much to keep in contact and up to date, with local people, as i do with my Internet friends.
I do use Twitter is a similar way, but the local people i interact with on Facebook are far more likely to be people that i actually know and i feel that makes a lot of difference.

I mentioned in my earlier Social Media Journeys blog post about Posterous and the fact that i'd given up using the site, mainly because it had become, for me at least, a site too far.
I was using Posterous in a similar way to how i use my personal blog and found that duplicating my output on yet another site, was just too much.
I would still recommend Posterous for some users, but i don't think it's for me anymore. Who knows though, that may well change at some point in the future.
Like all sites that i tend not to use anymore, i still keep my account open, just in case.

MySpace Now, where do you start with MySpace?
I was never a big fan of the site anyway and have only realy used it because of my involvement with Hastings Rock radio. I look after the stations MySpace page and to be honest,  hardly ever go there these days.
Those visits are likely to be even less frequent after the recent re-design of the site. I know i am not alone in thinking that it's awful. I'm just thankful that my need to use MySpace is becoming less and less, partly due to the emergence of sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Having said that, MySpace can be very useful for posting blog posts about Hastings Rock. There are still a lot of musical people out there who use the site. I suspect though that, like me, they'd happily use an alternative if they could.

Two other sites which i did use, to varying degrees, in 2010 were LinkedIn and Flickr.

I only started using LinkedIn because several people asked me to and i'll be honest, i've yet to get anything out of using the site.
I suspect that i'm not the right type of person to be using it. It appears to be aimed at the higher end of the working population, which is an area that i didn't really move in myself. I fully realise that, like so many other sites, LinkedIn will work well for some and not for others. Horses for courses, as we say in the UK.
I'll keep my profile and maybe even update it from time to time. But, it tends to take an email about the site to remind me of its existence.

Flickr, on the other hand, is another one of those sites that i've used periodically and have now started to use once again. It's a site that i like and i suspect the only reason i've not used it very much in the past is because i've been posting my photos onto my Facebook profile instead. Once again, that thought of duplicating what you're doing and the time that it takes, stops me from doing so.
But, i now have a new DSLR camera and a renewed enthusiasm for taking photos and this has led me back to Flickr.
I've always had an interest in photography and enjoy taking photos, but the lack of a really good camera has often stopped me from taking it more seriously.
As it happens, i was approached, via my Flickr profile, by a website that produces online guides to cities around the world. They wanted to use one of my photos for an online guide to Brighton, in the UK. A town only 35 miles from where i live.
So, i suspect Flickr is a site i'll be using much more in 2011.

And there you have it, a trip through the social media journey that i made in 2010. Sure, i used many other sites as well, but the ones mentioned above are the ones that i posted material onto.

I wonder how my own journey would compare to anyone elses? I suspect that many of the same sites would be used.
As always, i'd love to hear anybody elses own experiences. Who knows, i may well discover some great new social media sites to use in the process?

So, what does 2011 hold and which, if any, new social media sites will i discover and start using during this year? And how many will i stick with?
I've already had a look at the latest buzz site Quora. That seems to have everyone talking, so i guess it's only a matter of time before you'll find me there as well.

Wherever your own social media journey takes you during 2011, i wish you well.
Have a happy and interesting 2011.

PS: For a view of what my "real life" was like in 2010, you may be interested in this video that i made for YouTube recently. Like this blog post, it's an epic, coming in at 14 minutes long!

Doing It Once A Day.

Happy New Year.

I was reading a personal blog post by Rich Samuels, one of the contributors to this blog, this morning.

In his post, Rich was saying how, in 2011, he intended to try and post one piece of social media every day. By this he meant either a YouTube video, a blog post, or an AudioBoo.

This was very timely, because i had noticed the other day that that is precisely what i've been tending to do recently myself. This has not been a conscious decision on my part, more a reflection on how often i tend to post onto the social media sites mentioned above.

In my comment on Rich's blog, i mentioned that i haven't even included sites such as Twitter and Facebook in my calculations. Yes, Twitter and Facebook are both social media sites, but they certainly don't require the sort of commitment that posting onto, say, YouTube does. So, i will continue to leave those sites out of the equation, at least for now.

Yesterday also marked a kind of personal social media milestone for me. Which was rather appropriate seeing as it was New Years Day. For yesterday i posted my 300th post onto my personal blog, Moose Musings.

Now don't go getting excited and start thinking that they have all been written blog posts, because they haven't. That is certainly how i used Blogger when i started out, but Moose Musings soon became a collection point for all my social media output. Hence the 300 posts.

I used to post everything onto Posterous as well, but have stopped doing that over time. This is mainly because it is so easy to get bogged down with all the sites we tend to use. Duplicating pieces of social media across several different sites can be very time consuming and you often find that it's the same people subscribed, or following you on all of them anyway.

I also link my posts to both Twitter and Facebook anyway. So, Posterous just became a site too far for me. This is, after all, supposed to be fun.

And, because of that, i will not be commiting myself to daily social media posts. Partly because i tend not to make New Year resolutions anyway, but also because i don't wish to put any kind of pressure onto myself.
I have fun and enjoy what i do in the world of social media and i fully intend for that fun to continue.
I have found myself, in the past, feeling that i really ought to post a new YouTube video, or write a new blog post. But, thankfully, i've managed not to let those thoughts get to me. After all, quality is far more important than quantity.

I have no doubt that my social media output will remain the same during 2011 and who knows, it might even increase. But, it will be done at my own pace and i will be fully in control of it.

I wish Rich well in his aim to post once a day and i have no doubt that he is quite capable of producing worthwhile content, every day. I'll certainly be watching, reading and listening on a daily basis.

But, maybe, like so many New Year resolutions, this one will be broken?
And if it is, isn't that what rules and resolutions are there for in the first place. To be broken?

Go on, be a rebel and post when you want. You know it makes sense.

Social Media - Local Connections.

Recently, i have been involved in helping to organise some local charity events/projects. Some more successfully than others i might add!
But, one thing that has struck me whilst doing this, is the way in which i have been communicating with the other people involved.
Yes, i have been using those, relatively, old fashioned methods of communciation, email and text. I have even been using the antiquated telephone system, albeit mainly the mobile/cell variety.
All of these methods have their uses and that will probably continue to be the case, for much time to come..
But, what has surprised me has been the way that i've found myself using social media sites, such as Facebook, to help with both the communication and organising of these events.
These sites, especially the messaging side of Facebook, have enabled me to quickly contact and keep in touch with all the people involved with these projects and all within one site too.
One of the beauties of doing this on Facebook, is that your interaction can be done both privately and publicly, depending on what you wish others to see. I know that other sites allow direct/privtae messaging. But, i do find Facebook to be especially good for this.

I must admit that i was never much a fan of the idea of Facebook.
I know that this probably sounds very familiar to those of you who may have read other blog posts that i've written here. But, Facebook, like Twitter before it, was a site that i had to be convinced to try out and more, or less dragged onto.
Even then i was not a big fan, at first. But, i have finally come to see it's worth and strangely enough, it is the way that i interact on Facebook with local people, that has helped to change my opinion of the site.

Now, that is somewthing that i never expected.
My experiences with social media had, until fairly recently anyway, been mainly with people from right across the world and not with people living on my doorstep. But, the advent of both Twitter and Facebook has changed that and has opened up my social media world to a brand new community, my local community.

Both Twitter and Facebook are social media sites on which my virtual life and my real life collide. Facebook, especially, does this and that has been a slightly strange experience at times. At first my Facebook experience essentially mirrored my time on YouTube. I interacted with the same people, albeit using our real names.
But, then the local aspect started to become more prevalent and this is what really took me by surprise. I never expected that collison of virtual and real worlds to happen. But, it is something that seems to work. It has also led to a blurring of the lines between those two worlds.

I have met, both virtually and in reality, many new people from my local area because of social media. People i would quite probably never have met and interacted with, without the aid of sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

This is an aspect of social media that does tend to get overlooked when people talk about social networking.
We all tend to think of social media as a global phenomenon. But, sometimes the most interesting people might live right around the corner from your house and you just never knew it.

Just because you live in the same town, or city, doesn't mean that you can't, or shouldn't use social media to interact with the people within them.
Social media has the power to enable you to meet and interact with people from countries throughout the world and i have met many interesting people precisely because of this.
But, don't forget those people who live in the same country, or even the town as you.
Who knows what you might be missing out on?

There is a famous saying, usually used in a totally different context, "Think globally, act locally"
Maybe we can put that saying to use into social media as well?

Not The Only Show In Town.

Talking about how we now migrate between different social media/networking sites.

Those older sites are not, now, the only show in town.

Here's a link to Ken's blog post, that i mentioned in this video:
http://socialmediajourneys.blogspot.com/2010/10/using-your-website-as-content-hub.html

Using Your Website as a Content Hub

Not too many year ago, but ages ago in internet time, everybody was building personal websites. No knowledge of html or css or xml needed; services like GeoCities or Homestead (etc.) made it easy to use ready-made templates, upload your photos, type out your life story, and have a website.

Those services are now long gone, as people started considering their "home" as their profile page on a community site such as MySpace or Facebook. Another development was the replacement of the static content web page, with the dynamic content blog. Blogger (where this site is hosted) was one of the pioneers and still a major player, but WordPress and others have also risen to dominance here. Now add twitter to the mix, and podcasts, and photostreams, and videos..., and pretty soon you've got content spread across a half-dozen sites or more.

Personally, I regularly post content to three or four blogs, two Twitter accounts, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (photos), Soundcloud (music), and Audioboo (podcast). Okay, maybe I'm a bit on the extreme end. But this is a social media blog you're reading, so I'm going to guess you just might appreciate my situation.

For some time I've struggled with how to effectively combine all these different content streams into a single, well-designed, website that presents all of my online output. I must not have been the only one wrestling with this issue, as two new services have recently popped up offering a solution: About.me and Flavors.me.

Flavors.me was the first to launch, and I quickly signed up (see my page here). I was given a choice of several basic layouts, simple instructions on choosing a background image (I uploaded my own), and a list of services to import my feeds from, including blogger, linkedin, facebook, flickr, twitter, etc. Within a few minutes my page was up and running and looking great.

The feed from each service (blog, twitter, etc.) is displayed as part of the page. Without leaving my flavors.me page you can seamlessly click through my content from a variety of sources. This was it - exactly what I'd been looking for forever. I finally had that one, single destination website that I could point people to and have all my content readily visible.

The free version of flavors.me did limit the number of feeds I could import, but I was happy enough to pay for the full version. I've also assigned one of my personal domains, kengoldstein.ca, to the page.

Then About.me launched. Even though I was happy with my Flavors.me site, I still wanted to try it out (see my page here). On first glance, it appears to be almost a clone of Flavors.me; choose a template, upload your background image, select your feeds to import, bang, you're in business.

But immediately frustrations surfaced. I still cannot get my background image to scale correctly. It either tiles or expands way beyond the window. And it will only allow me to include one blogger account or twitter account at a time. The other other blogs can be added as extra links, but will not display inline. For my purposes, these problems add up to a huge FAIL.

On the positive side, I gotta admit that About.me has the much better domain name. Flavors.me is, well, kinda silly. I don't care, as I use my own domain name, but still.

If you have multiple content streams and would like to combine them in a single, personal hub, you really should test them each out. Leave a comment below with which one you prefer, or if you use a different (and better?) solution.

Flavors.me - FTW! Silly name, and fee required for full features, but works like a dream. Exactly what I wanted.
About.me - When you launch second, you're supposed to improve on the original idea, not mess it up. FAIL!

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet.

For somebody who is a, self confessed, social media junky, i was actually quite late onto Twitter.

I'm afraid that i was one of those people who, initially, thought that Twitter couldn't possibly be of any use to me. After all, what use is just 140 characters to somebody who regularly makes 10 minute long videos for YouTube, Or, whose blog posts could probably test the patience of a saint?

Yes, i was one of those who said, or says "I don't want to know what you had for breakfast" etc etc.
That is a common argument given by non Twitterers and i even heard this very point made by the actor Sir Michael Caine just last week. In his defence, Michael Caine has now joined the Twitterati and, just like me, has realised the error of his ways.

I was dragged, virtually kicking and screaming, onto Twitter in September, 2008.
That may well seem like a long time ago, especially in the world of the Internet. But, as somebody who, generally, signs up to most of the new social media sensations, i was actually quite late off of the mark.
Most of my online friends were already well and truly addicted to Twitter by then and it was in fact down to them that i signed up in the first place.

My moment of epiphany came during a road trip, with some fellow YouTubers, in the USA, during 2008..
It was during that trip that i saw, at first hand, the way that Twitter could and did connect people. It wasn't all about your choice of breakfast cereal after all.

Obviously, since that day, i've never looked back.

Like most Twitter users, the way that i use Twitter has evolved over the years and has led me in some interesting directions. Something that i may well talk about in future blog posts.

But, Twitter, the way that it is now used and how my own use has evolved, was brought home to me last week, when i was caught up in a local news story.
I have talked about aspects of this in a separate blog post.

What i realised after that event, was the way that Twitter is used, by myself and others, to spread the news and our coverage of it.
We can probably all think of recent major news stories in which Twitter has been used in this way. But, it really brings it home to you, when you are a part of it yourself.

I was very impresessed by the way that the vast majority of news organisations, radio and tv stations were using, watching and interacting onTwitter. It has become a major source of news for us all. This is something that has really crept up on everybody and something that i'm sure the founders of Twitter never considered when they first started the service.

Twitter has now become, for many including myself, a primary way of communicating with friends, family, contacts and even complete strangers.
It has also become my primary source of news coverage, from right across the world.

Twitter also links me to viral videos, interesting newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, local events and much, much more that i would never have seen, or heard about, otherwise.

I, for one, would never have expected all of this when i, very tentatively, signed up to Twitter back in September 2008.
I guess that this just goes to show that things are not always what they seem?

If you have your own Twitter story to tell, please let us know. We'd love to hear it.

By the way, what did you have for breakfast?

The Quality of the Conversation

An audioboo regarding the question of quantity and quality in the number of "followers" or "subscribers" an individual has on any social media site (twitter, audioboo, youtube, etc.). It seems to be an answer that most individuals grasp instinctively, but that marketing experts are slow to understand.

Introduction to My Social Media Journey

An interesting aspect of some journeys is when you set out with no particular destination in mind. Or, to put it more accurately, only a vague concept of the destination. An idea, a belief, a conviction that the destination is out there, although it has yet to be named or defined. I suppose my "social media" journey is kind of like that, as it began long before anybody ever used the term "social media."

Hi. My name is Ken Goldstein, known on many sites by my online handle of "kenrg" and I'm here to share a bit of my social media journey...  In brief, I've been online since about 1993, first using text-only dial-up services, then AOL, then an ISP to get directly to the full colorful web. One of my first surprises was the sense of community. Even in plain text, there were pockets of like-minded people, anxious to share information and to connect.

I learned html and posted my first web site around 1995. Shortly after, I added a cgi script for basic threaded discussion and ran a board for a music-related group. Again, community being the focus.

Meanwhile, professionally, I was also a member of an online community of nonprofit and social service professionals, called HandsNet. By 1999 I was not simply a HandsNet member, but had joined the staff as Director of Online Community Development, managing discussion board related to fighting poverty, and supervising the discussion moderators.

When I first opened my account here on blogger.com, nearly ten years ago, it was well before Google had purchased it from Pyra, the original developers. Likewise, I joined YouTube four-and-a-half years ago, before the Google purchase, and have been regularly tweeting away on twitter for nearly four years as well. Heck, I was even a Friendster member long before MySpace and Facebook.

From "online community" to "web 2.0" to "social media" I've been along on the journey, sometimes testing the waters ahead of the crowds, sometimes following, but always eager to learn the latest tools. For me, it's always been about the connections, and about communication. And I believe we have only begun to tap the true power and possibility of this brave new world.

I'm pleased that Andy has asked me to be a contributor to this blog. I will be sharing some recollections of my journey so far, my opinions on where we're going, and some criticisms of those who don't get it (hint: those who think Twitter is an advertising medium will be regular targets of my scorn). And I look forward to your comments on my posts.

You can find links to all my various feeds (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, photostreams, etc.) on my home portal (kengoldstein.ca).  Meanwhile, here are links to a couple of recent blog posts to give you an idea of where I stand:

• Calling "BS" on Twitter Study
• Blogging is Dead: Long Live the Blog!

Blurry.

Originally posted on YouTube on 20th September, 2009.
Real life vs Internet life.
Are the two worlds starting to collide? And how big will you let the bang be?

Crisis Of Faith?

Originally posted on YouTube on 30th August, 2009.
A video inspired by a conversation on Twitter. Inspiration can come from the most unlikely places.

Social Media & It's Use.

Originally posted on YouTube on 11th August, 2009.
A vlog inspired by three blogs/articles i'd recently read.
Have you changed the way you use the Internet & social media.
Does your age determine how you use social media?

A Secret Life?

Originally posted to YouTube on 19th July, 2009.
This was a response to my own "Digital memory bamk" video and to a comment from another YouTuber.
Many of my videos have come from viewers comments and feedback.

Vlog A Day - Social Networking.

Originally posted on YouTube on 19th February, 2009.
Social Networking - Is that term an oxymoron?
Can Social Networking damage your health?
Discuss.