Soapbox Mojo

All I need to know about Social Media I learned in kindergarten

• Share everything – Share your twitter updates, your bookmarks, your netvibes, your flickr, share, share, and share more.
• Play fair – Follow anyone who follows you, return the retweet, and comment honestly on other peoples work.
• Don’t hit people – Disagree with the idea not the person*.  Comments should be civil not incendiary.
• Put things back where you found them – Attribute your sources.
• Clean up your own mess - If you make a mistake in a post or comment, fix it.  Update the post, annotate the post as updated, and give a brief reason.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours – Use and honor the Creative Commons license.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody – Need I say more.
• When you go out into the world, Watch out for traffic – Stop, Look, Listen, and then walk don’t run.  Good guidance for anyone entering social media.
• Hold hands and stick together – It’s the community, stupid.
• Be aware of wonder – See different, think different, be different.*

*This post contains some phrases from Chris Heuer’s presentation - Making the Case: Selling Social Media Into and Within the Enterprise

Are you my friend or a ‘friend’? (Facebook)

UPDATED: Photo security is handled separately. Details are added to the bottom of the post.

During two recent presentations about social media both groups expressed their desire to keep personal and professional activity separate.  By the end of the session they all realized that those lines are quickly blurring as more and more organization setup Facebook pages and work associates request to be friends.

Although somewhat obscure there is a mechanism in Facebook that will allow you to have friends and ‘friends’.  Here is how you can ‘friend’ someone without sharing photos of your recent antics with friends and family.

Select the Friends menu item across the top bar to show your Friends Lists.  Initially there are two Friend Lists All Friends and Limited Profile.  I’ve change the name of my Limited Profile to ‘friends’.  You can do this by selecting Limited Profile and then using the edit link on the right.

To add people to your ‘friends’ list you can either start typing their name like below or use the Select Multiple Friends link on the right.

Once selected your friends are now members of your ‘friends’ list. ** CAUTION** At this point the list has the same access as your All Friends list.  Don’t be fooled by the initial name of Limited Profile, they are not actually limited yet.

Next mouse over Settings in the top bar and select Privacy Settings > Profile and you will see the default settings for your profile. 

Select the drop down for any item you want to limit access and choose customize.  Here you can either select a Friend List or an individual person to add then to the list.

My ‘friends’ list is not allowed to see my Personal Info.

As you can see from my updated profile page I have limited access to Personal Information, Photos, and Videos.  As an added precaution I have removed the right for any friend to post on my wall.

 

UPDATED: Photo security is handled separately.

To restrict photo access select Profile > Photos Tab > Album Privacy

 

As before limit access to each album by adding Friend Lists or individual names.  As an added privacy measure I have unchecked the top boxes and removed access to Everyone on Facebook.

 

When done you can review the access permission to all your albums.

 

** CAUTION ** These credentials may not be honored by all Facebook Applications.  IAW you might limit access to photos but through a photo application your ‘friends’ might have access.

Here is a great video to put this all in perspective - FaceBook In Reality

Visualize your Social Network

Now that I’ve established myself on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter I set out to find an application that could create a visual interpretation of my social networks.  To date I cannot find one single application capable of integrating connections across various social networks but I did find Nexus, Friend Wheel, and Twitter Browser.

Nexus is a Facebook application that creates a graph showing how you and your friends are connected.  As with most Facebook applications the setup is easy and once complete the fun begins.

You can choose a radial or spring graph and either white or black background.

Mouse over a node and the individuals Facebook image and all shared contact are displayed.  The graph really makes it easy to analyze your network and identify where separate clusters merge.

Friend Wheel is another Facebook application.  It is not as dynamic but the colors are vibrant.

It creates a static image of your network relationships and a flash version that shows connection with a mouse over.

Twitter Browser is a web based application that uses your Twitter alias to create a very dynamic display that you can browse by selecting a node.  Each time you select a node their connections are displayed.  It only shows 16 connections which seem to be chosen at random since mine where not the newest or most active ones.

All good fun but I’m still looking for the application that can do it all.

Building My Brand on LinkedIn

I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since the service started in 2004 and have used it to maintain an active CV and stay in contact with friends and associates all over the world.  Recently they’ve added a limited but powerful group of applications that allow you to aggregate your social media content from other services.

Here are the applications available at the time of this post.

• Box.net files - manage and share files
• Blog Link - Connect your blog
• Company Buzz - Twitter activity about your company
• Google Presentation - Share and embed presentations
• Wordpress - Connect your Wordpress blog to LinkedIn
• Polls - Survey your connections
• Reading List by Amazon - Share what you are reading
• SlideShare Presentations - Share presentations
• My Travel - See where you and your network are traveling
• Huddle Workspaces - A collaboration space

By adding just three of these applications to my LinkedIn profile (Wordpress, Reading List, SlideShare) the definition of my personal brand became much clearer.  Here is a quick look at my LinkedIn Profile.

Social Media Invades Outlook

Xobni is an amazing little Outlook plug-in that really adds value.  Once installed it quickly indexes your emails and contacts to provide some great capabilities.

• Lighting Fast Email Search
• Email Analytics
• Relationship statistics
• Personal Assistant
• Threaded conversations
• Shared attachments
• Phone number extraction
• Web services integration with external sources (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Hoovers)

When installed Xobni adds another panel to your Outlook client.  The panel is populated with data related to the sender of any email you select in Outlook.

(** N.B. Email addresses have been removed from the images resulting in white or black boxes **)

Working from the top down let’s walk through what you get.

 

The profile contains basic details and contact information if available.  The ‘edit profile’ link allows you to select what data source to use for profile information.  You can choose Xobni, Outlook, LinkedIn or Facebook.  The four tabs in the profile area are described below.

Statistics shows the email activity between you and the sender.  Since I select myself the graph is showing all my email activity.

 

Actions provides quick links to some basic tasks. The ‘Schedule time with xxx’ is especially useful creating an email with a quick view of your availability over the next few days.  No more hunting through your calendar for open time slots.

 

The LinkedIn tab attempts to find the individual in the LinkedIn network.  You can then view their LinkedIn profile right from Outlook.  If they are not one of your LinkedIn connections an additional ‘Add +’ button displays. 

As with the LinkedIn tab the Facebook tab provides the ability to find and add individuals to your Facebook Friends.

As expected the Hoover’s tab provides information on the organization.  Here I selected an email from Mindjet.

As part of the indexing process Xobni looks to identify relationships based on your email traffic.  In the ‘Network’ pane it ranks relationships between you and the selected sender.  Using the magnifying glass you can search just this network for a specific contact.

All conversations (threaded) that have occurred with this specific individual are shown in a scrollable and searchable list.

Any files exchanged by email are shown in a scrollable and searchable list.

Data junkies can even review their own email activity.  This data can be sent, copied, saved or printed.

Since installing Xobni finding and adding contact to LinkedIn and Facebook has become less of a chore.

I Blog and so doe$ Marriott - $$ Cha-ching $$

I have not made any money and don’t expect to find anyone willing to let me dictate posts but this is a great ROI story.

Kathleen Matthews, who heads global communications at Marriott International, came up with the idea for chief executive Bill Marriott’s blog. He saw it as a good way to communicate.

"That’s the importance of public relations, of advertising, of everything we do," Marriott said. "And this is just another channel." Marriott also likes how the blog shows that he’s "a human just like everybody else." He sometimes breaks from writing about corporate issues to post about the movies he sees on Saturdays with his wife.

Marriott has thousands of employees around the world, who make up about one-fifth of the blog’s readership and comment frequently. "It is the virtual substitute for Bill Marriott visiting every hotel," Matthews said.

He’s not your typical blogger — he doesn’t use computers. Instead, he dictates entries into a recorder and a staff member transcribes and posts them. The audio is also on the site, which averages about 6,000 visitors per week and has had more than 600,000 total visitors since its inception in January 2007.

Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s blog.

 

Marketing Moves to the Blogosphere

Badges?… We don’t need no… stinkin’ badges!

Stop cutting and pasting all that html and JavaScript.

If you use more than one social networking site or microblogging service, you don’t have to deal with adding a badge for any new outposts you add to your social network.  With Retaggr you can create a profile card to use on your blog and it will dynamically update with activity and changes.  You can even add IM widgets that will enable people to initiate a chat with you from your blog or web site.

Once you’ve created a profile the site provides easy to use tools for your blog and web sites.

Add it to your email signature

Add a widget to your blog and replace all your badges

Put a button on your blog and visitors will have a great way to connect with you on any of your social networks.

Enable your blog for the Retaggr network.

Posting to Twitter and Yammer

At PointB, where I work, we are experiencing a minor groundswell in the use of Yammer.  This is an awesome occurrence except now I am challenged with posting to Yammer and Twitter.

He is my recipe for posting to both services.

Ingredients

• SnipUrl account and toolbar installed
• TwitterMail account
• Yammer account
• Twitter account

Directions

• Verify your email settings in Yammer.  Uncheck to bottom box unless you want to get an email an confirm every post.

• Browse to some interesting content on the Internet.
• Activate the SnipUrl browser toolbar
• Choose email as the method the share the URL.

• Address the email to yammer@yammer.com
• cc xxxxx99xxxx@twittermail.com (Substitute your TwitterMail address here)
• Review and edit message body as required
• Send

• Wait a few moments for the bits to circulate the net.
• See your post on post Twitter and Yammer

You can email posts without using SnipUrl if you don’t need to refer people to an Internet site.  Just create an email message with the addresses and anything in the body will get posted.  As an added benefit this will work with your company Blackberry or Windows Mobile device.

How I Keep Track of it All

If you’re at all like me you have a few email accounts and belong to various social network sites.  I monitor and maintain the following.

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

GMail

Yahoo Mail

AIM

Yahoo Messenger

GTalk

Yammer

Fortunately I have Digsby to help aggregate all the updates into one client application.  It is the only tool I’ve found that allows me to track and manage all the incoming messages and information in an acceptable way.

Once downloaded and installed setting up the Digsby client is rather straight forward.  It supports all the major IM, email, and Social Networks.  It does not support Yammer directly but here is the trick.  In my Yammer settings I allowed updates from IM (GTalk) which Digsby does support.  Winner!

Here is a view of my client application.

When there is an update a small bubble pops open at the bottom of my screen with the new message.  This can be turned off during presentations or when it becomes annoying.

If I mouse over any of the Social Networks a message drawer (see twitter below) opens allowing me to review and reply to any recent posts.

It is not perfect.  You do lose some of the underlying application capability like attaching a file in Yammer or re-tweet as Twitter post.  Not a big trade off when you’re trying to manage screen real estate.

Qwaq a usable virtual workspace

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For the last few months I’ve been looking at how my current client might leverage virtual worlds as a collaboration tool. Second Life is impressive while at the same time a bit over the top. I find most people focus on the interesting avatars and not the content of the event or meeting. The recent reports from Gartner in the WSJ show that SL might be cool and interesting but not useful. Interestingly, while watching an interview in SL, Qwaq was mentioned as a viable up and coming solution for virtual workspaces.

Using the technology created by the open source project Croquet, Qwaq has created virtual “forums” that can be used as turn key collaboration spaces for any team or organization. I spent some time creating a space to share my product road map as a showcase of ideas and technologies. So what was my experience? Here are some highlights.

• Installation and configuration was straight forward and easy. No need to pick a funny name and configure an avatar.
• Once in the tutorial forum I was easily moving around and adding objects and documents to the space.
• My “Collabrathon Forum” consisted of presentations running in kiosk mode (AutoPlay), images and screen shots, a movie, and active web pages.
• The VoIP worked without issues and the sound was clear.
• Support was responsive and provided direct valuable guidance and feedback.

There were a few challenges.

• You are limited to four active Qwaq Multi-Share application in a forum. So I could not add a fifth presentation screen or web page.
• Bandwidth limitations limit your ability to show YouTube videos or have creative slide transitions in presentations.

Qwaq seem a product that will get us past webinars and into more collaborative space because the creators followed the KISS principle and provided a WYSIWYG tool for the virtual world.

</nostrathomas>