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Mar 13 2010

Go or NoGo Geo-Tagging? Why I Won't Be "Checking In" or "Mayor" at #sxsw

Category: community building, connections, how do i?, lifestreaming, social media, sxsw, tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 5:30 pm

[NOTE: Local Austin paper says SXSW Interactive is UP 40% from last year's 11,000 attendees. And guess who's winning the geo-local wars? Who do ya think? Gowalla vs 4sq? See Geolocation Wars. Cause I ain't tellin, and I ain't playin either.]

Check the Friendfeed Stream of all #sxsw and #sxswi tweets. Is that geo-enough for ya? You can watch them in realtime, you can grab the RSS, you can comment in the room directly. If you want to be an admin to add other streams into the stream, let me know.

Okay, I lied. I just checked in using Sitby.us. But I didn't GEO-Locate! It's a twitter-based site that allows me to see where my peeps are… Perhaps the differences are subtle. Crap did I just CHECK-IN again?

So I really don't have any against the geo-lactation apps like Gowalla or 4sq. Sorry, Geo-Location. And actually I was shown Sityby.us and think they've got something the others don't, *but… I probably won't be self-geo-auto-locating-checking-in with Sitby.us either.

And I AM actually quite into people, connecting with friends old and new, virtual or real-time. And I am into parties just like the next person of my age. (That was self-depreciating humor, BTW.) I even won an award for and tried to implement a Event Planning/Meeting app while I was part of Dell's Global Online team. The closest we ever got was a page I created that used RSS feeds and a fancy parsing widget that made it seem like we were delivering event-rich information.

Sooooo… what is it about the geo-frenzy that is happening right now that does not inspire me?

Well, let me ask you first. What about the geo-aware apps and geo-hyper phones that has YOU excited?

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/geo-NO

If you do see me in the real-geo world, say hi!

SXSW 2010 posts:

From SXSW 2009:

Tags: #smbc3, geo-location, geo-location fun, geo-location hell, geo-location now, interactive, interactive conference, must be more positive, social media, sorry facebook sucks, south by southwest, sxsw, sxsw 2009, sxsw 2010, sxswi, why your UX sucks

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Mar 09 2010

I Accidentally BUZZed: I Was Under the Impression that I Knew Google Buzz

Category: connections, how do i?, lifestreaming, social media, tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 4:20 pm

So a funny thing happened on the way to connecting my last post here.

I added a book mark to my Google bookmarks, when publishing my last story on uber.la. And low and behold, I BUZZed it.

Now, it was my understanding that BUZZ was all done via the GMail interface. And since I don't really USE GMail, as much as forward through GMail, I was surprised to see the screen above. And to see that I'd been BUZZing all along.

Well, I still haven't opened my GMail-accessed Google BUZZ folder, but clearly I've been BUZZING a lot. Hmm.

What's your BUZZ strategy? I'd like to hear it.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/buzz-why

Tags: a surprise BUZZ, always a BUZZ, buzz, BUZZing all along, BUZZing right along, do not BUZZ me again, do you buzz?, gmail, GMail-enabled BUZZ, google buzz, google BUZZ folder, how do you BUZZ, oops I BUZZed, why buzz

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Mar 09 2010

What Is Your "Always On" Technology? How Should I Reach You Right NOW?"

Category: about me, community building, connections, executive learnings, how do i?, social media, teaming & leadership, tech opinion, tools, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 10:24 am

Pop Quiz: I need to reach you in the next 15 minutes about an opportunity, what would you suggest I use?

Facebook? Twitter? IM? Phone call? TXT your phone?

I've got some friends who don't answer their phones but will respond to TXT messages within minutes. There are folks who love DM in Twitter, or Messaging in FB. And then there's IM (Yahoo, AIM, MSN, GTalk) and Skype and G-mail and now BUZZ. Oh and get this, I have some friends who love Skype, but for CHAT. So let's count them up.

Phonecall direct (leave no voicemail)
Phonecall indirect (VM left)
Email
IM – Yahoo
IM – MSN
IM – AIM
IM – iChat or Jabber
IM – Skype
IM – Facebook chat
Facebook Messaging
Twitter (@ message)
Twitter (DM message)
Skype Video
TXT to phone
Google Buzz (not in my tool kit at the moment)

Did I miss any? And one other problem is even using some of the universal IM clients like Adium or GAIM, sometimes the special features of Yahoo Messenger for example, don't work within the alternative clients. So I've got one friend who likes to chat using Yahoo Messenger. I can respond via Adium (my favorite IM client) initially, but I have to open YM directly to access the other 50% of the data this friend is sending.

So I can't predict what works for everyone. Well, in fact, WE can't predict what works for *anyone.*

So my approach is to listen. Respond in like-kind to those who use alterna-connections. I tweet, and I update my FB status daily. But I rarely open IM unless someone I need to talk to is an IMer. (it's open right now and I'm chatting to one of my IMer friends.)

So I will give you the answer for me, in order of preference. That's the only system I understand, or pretend to understand.

Text me
Email me
Call me
DM me on Twitter
Message me on Facebook.

If you need me to pay attention to something. Or you need to transmit more that a brief status update:

Call me, talk to me, tell me what you want.

Email me if it's not urgent but has a lot of information or action items you want my response on. Oh, and if it's business use my business email. If it's personal it's likely to get buried in my business email deluge. BUT (I know this is complicated, so bear with me…) if it's urgent and personal, do these three things. TXT me. Call me. Email me. If it's urgent, continue to escallate until you reach me.

Oh and finally, to be efficient, put the ASK right up front. Imagine that even in email you've only got 140 characters to tell me what you are asking me for. It helps. Even if there's paragraphs of data behind the ask, just get to the ask right away. And if you are looking for and ACTION or RESPONSE put that in the subject line. (Subject: ACTION REQUESTED: Please review this document and reply in 24 hours.) And if possible, give the person a deadline. If they miss the message, and miss the deadline for some reason, you can then proceed.

That way, when the tumble of emails continues to scroll past me in Outlook, I can see there's an Action request. (Hint: Using URGENT message statuses never works. On mobile email systems it may or may not even show up depending on the software and settings.) So use the Subject line of every email to state *exactly* what you want.

I'm happy to respond. I want to talk to you. I do, it's my nature.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/right-now

Tags: action requested, always on, business email deluge, Call me, contact me, deadline, direct ask, g-mail, G-talk, get to the ask, get to the ask quickly, give the person a deadline, how should i reach you?, how should you reach me?, IM, in outlook, in the next 15 minutes, Messaging, outlook, outlook hell, phonecall direct, phonecall VM, response requested, review requested, Skype, talk to me, tell me what you want, Yahoo Messenger

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Mar 08 2010

Rockin the Tweets: Twitter Tools, Twitter Lists, Stats, Discovery #Twitter

Category: code is poetry, community building, connections, how do i?, lifestreaming, social media, tools — jmacofearth @ 8:13 am

So all the BUZZ around Google Buzz seems to be around simplicity and not having too many followers or having too much noise due to those followers. Here's something I want to let you know. It's not the tool (twitter vs buzz vs facebook) it's how you manage it. So here's a few ideas I'd like to share around managing your social media status-sphere. It really doesn't matter if you are trending towards Buzz over Twitter. What matters is how you use it.

First up: Twitter Lists.

What are they? Why you need 'm. And why your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite lists are different.

Here is my page of Twitter list links: http://uber.la/tools/twitter-lists

So what I would like to ask you, as you are starting to re-frame your social media accounts is this, "If I can't add you to one of my Twitter lists I probably shouldn't be following you in the first place."

There is a 500 tweep limit for Twitter lists. So beyond that you will have to create 2nd and 3rd lists to keep your "austin friends" together in your lists. You will notice I have an "austin friends" and an "austin friends 2" lists. This is not an indication of favoratism, but merely a reaching of the Twitter List 500 tweep maximum. I suspect I will be giving up my "tennis" list or my "cats and dogs" list in the future to build an "austin friends 3" list. But not today. (grin)

RULE of TWITTER ADDITION: before you click "follow" figure out what list you are going to add someone to and then do both. 1. Follow; 2. Add To List.

RULE of TWITTER SUBTRACTION: if you are following someone and you can't put them on a list, perhaps you should consider unfollowing them. 1. Examine who you follow; 2. Add all "friends" to a list; 3. UF, unfollow everyone you cannot place on one of your lists. (Why were you following them in the first place?)

Next: Twitter Tools

Fact: You can't manage Twitter on Twitter.com. You need tools. Aside from the Twitter Tools Matrix, here is the shortlist for Twitter clients I recomend.

1. Tweetdeck; 2. Seesmic; 3. Hootsuite. And more recently, a Mac-only favorite is Nambu.

Next: Twitter Stats and Analytics

While following and being followed in Twitterville is interesting, almost as interesting and potentially more valuable is the tools that allow you to see what people are tweeting about. Example: during the SuperBowl 2010 the hashtags #nfl and #superbowl and #superbowlads were quite popular with tweeters who were rating the advertisements that were paying over a million dollars per 30 sec. slot. So if your ad didn't "trend" within these hashtags you can bet the audience mostly ignored it, or forgot about it. And there were a number of unremarkable ads.

TERM: "Trending." When something is trending on Twitter it means the Tweet volume is so large that it is showing up as one of the top twenty most frequent words being tweeted.

So what tools are my most used when looking at Twitter trends? Here are my top Twitter stats and analytics tools.

1. TwitterVenn (making Venn diagrams out of trends is fun and easy); 2. TwitterFall (a visual browser for seeing hashtags and searches) ; 3. Twitter Trends Map (see the topics that are trending worldwide);

Finally: Twitter Discovery Tools

Finding new people to follow, new trends to track and new hashtags to search for is all part of the beauty of Twitter.

1. Mr. Tweet (who you follow and who they recommend); 2. FriendorFollow (are they following you back?); 3. NearbyTweets (how's close to you and tweeting?); 4. Twittoria (information about your flock)

Take the time to add value to your Tweets. Don't just follow to gain followers. If you can't put them on a Twitter List, don't follow them. Lists will become the new marker of Twitter Authority.

No, you can't ask me to add you to a list. I must discover you and add you manually. Yes, you can ask me, but I'm likely to… consider it first.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/rule-twitter

Sacrificing Twitter for the Greater Good: Signal-to-Noise Improves (Update v1 3-1-10)

Category: community building, connections, how do i?, social media, speed the web, tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 7:43 am

dropping followers like hot potatoes with managetwitter

managetwitter.com: we gain some we lose more.

Update 3-1-10: It appears I'm losing about 10 followers a day on average, as the tweeps catch up to the fact that they themselves have been unfollowed. (new chart at bottom of page)

I've done it again. Right here, just weeks before the announcement of the Texas Social Media Awards and the start of SXSW I've gone an unfollowed over 4k followees on Twitter. I am sure the affect on my followers will be quite dramatic as well. So here's why I did it.

1. Life is too short to be trying to read everything.
2. Everyone is so stoked about BUZZ because they get to be selective about who they choose to include. (Duh, how'd we get so over-followed in the first place.
3. Discovery is the biggest rush with social media, so if I unfollow a ton of folks I get to rediscover them again! wOOt!
4. I believe who you follow is as important as who follows you.
5. Good Twitter tools are hard to find.
6. All the folks I unfollowed were probably auto-dm bots anyway.
7. I probably do not deserve the number of followers I have. (Well, that one's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but…)
8. Take a bold action. None of this unfollowing by the 20-per-page, as Twitter.com (hell) would have it.

So what is going to happen from here? Oh my, all the people who are concerned about who's following and who's not following will start dropping me in huge waves. Thus my ranking, my status on the Twitterholic in Austin list is going to plummet like a rock. And I will drop back into the goop from whence I came.

Then something remarkable is going to happen. I am going to discover some new cool people to follow. Some of whom I have not followed in months. Some of whom I've never followed. And some of whom I've followed, unfollowed and followed again.

And that's the fun of it.

Here's a comparison of my followers vs. followees as reported by twittercounter.com.

All that said, I hope you stick around. I hope you tweet good stuff. And I hope we continue to enjoy the conversation.

But I will understand if you UFM. As a close friend said recently, "I tried to follow you, but you are insane. Half the time I have no idea what you are talking about. It just made me feel confused and dumb."

I hope that's not the affect my range of tweets has on you, but I do understand if it does. I do.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/sacrificing-twitter

I hope you can find a lot of great reasons to follow me, and my rants on Twitter and about Twitter. Here's my little collection called The Twitter Way.

And I'm also putting together a list of TwitterTools, the one's I know and love. I call this the TwitterMatrix.

This massively coordinated unfollowing was powered by ManageTwitter.com. Bless them for developing a new tool to manage our accounts at more than 20 peeps per page, like Twitter.com. Now we can get some unfollowing done, by golly!

+++

Here's the newest chart as of 3-1-10. I have changed the scale to be only 1 month, to show more clearly the pattern as my followers begin to drop off, primarily because I have unfollowed, not because I am tweeting differently, or doing anything spammy. It's just a fact, if you unfollow me I'm likely to unfollow you. If I'm paying attention, that is. And if I care.

My chart of follower loss since the purge.