Me, Her, the Boy and a Dog
Also, I founded the GoFightWinVT Tumblr, so if you're a Hokie, give it a follow. And, feel free to check out my Project 365 Tumblr.
My jerk friend Todd introduced me to Path (he also introduced me to Tumblr four years ago) and after nearly of month, it is my favorite social networking tool and the first one I got to when I want to post an update.
First of all, Path is only for your iPhone, Droid or iPad. You can’t login to a website from your laptop or desktop and update your status - everything is done through your handheld device. I have it installed on my Android phone and my iPad.
Secondly, the UI (user interface for you non-geeky types) is as slick and intuitive as they come. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it will take some time to get used to just how simple it is.
The reason Path is the first app I open when I have something I want to share with my friends is because it’s so flexible and versatile, I can update Path, Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr and Twitter at one time. Any, all or none. Though, sharing through Tumblr only seems to work when I take a photo - comments, check-ins and other posts don’t provide a Tumblr option, though I’m sure that’s in the works.
The difference between Path and the others is that I have chosen to reserve my Path friends to only those people I have a personal connection with. For example, I am Path friends with my jerk friend Todd because we go back a few years and he was a groomsman in my wedding. I am NOT friends with the kid that sat next to me in high school trigonometry or with my old boss at the last place I worked. It’s a select group and that’s what I believe the creators of Path had in mind.
There are no “lists” to create. I don’t have to choose which group I want to share certain posts with. But, I can choose to share it with my Path friends and also with my Twitter and Facebook friends.
Another key benefit to using Path is the lack of oversharing and noise. Maybe it’s a little bit snobbish, but I find my Path friends to be a little more particular about what they post. It’s not always high-brow, but it’s interesting and relevant. I am truly interested in the posts on my timeline, which by the way, is the true definition of a timeline.
The difference, at least for me, between Path and other social networking platforms I’ve used (Facebook, Twitter and even *gasp* Tumblr) is like watching a TV show on Netflix sans commercials vs. watching it live with commercials.
Path is like watching your favorite show without interruptions. There’s no noise to interrupt you. You can simply enjoy your show without distractions. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are like watching a TV program live. Yes, you get to see your show, but you also have to sit through all the commercials and even worse, in an election year, political ads. Sure, every now and then you might see a commercial (post) you are interested in, but most of them just annoy you.
So far, I haven’t seen any animated gifs of cats with light sabers or any “All the Things” inspired images and I hope I never will. If I want to see those things, I’ll check out my Facebook news feed or Tumblr dashboard. And those things are fine sometimes, but I like my Path to be about my real friends doing real things.
Give Path a chance and if you think we have a personal connection, feel free to friend me, but please don’t be offended if I don’t accept. You can always friend me on Facebook.
This is an important precedent, and it happened here in the U.S.
Five workers fired for complaining about their jobs on Facebook will go back to work after the National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor, affirming workers can safely vent their frustrations about the workplace on social networks.
The dust-up began last year when an employee at the non-profit agency Hispanics United of Buffalo vented on Facebook, on a non-working Saturday, about a co-worker’s accusation that she didn’t do enough for the organization’s clients.
Other co-workers chimed in to make comments like, “What the f… Try doing my job. I have 5 programs,” and “Tell her to come do [my] f***ing job n c if I don’t do enough, this is just dum.”
The co-worker saw the messages and passed them along to a supervisor, who fired the workers, citing the company’s social media policy banning cyber harassment of co-workers.
One of the terminated employees complained to the National Labor Relations Board. The judge, in the first social media case that didn’t involve a unionized workplace, ruled the employees were within their rights to converse among themselves about working conditions.
“The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you’re gonna hear about it.” ~ Frank Castanza
Social Media Trends Diagram: I think it’s dead on.
Within the last 30 minutes, Facebook has done away with the “Become a Fan” of button on fan pages and replaced it with a “Like” button. Below is the message you’ll likely see on your Facebook page:
Facebook “hopes” this change will feel more “lightweight” and that it will increase the number of “connection” made across the site. I’m sure it’ll catch on, because, well, let’s face it, Facebook does what it wants, usability be damned.
How long have we been been “liking” status updates on the Wall? Long enough to feel there is a difference between liking an update and liking an organization’s page. Becoming a “fan” of a page meant that you were somewhat invested in that group. Now, Facebook has removed a level of intimacy by relegating “fans” to people with a vague interest.
While this may be fine for most, I strongly “dislike” this change. “Fanning” a page had finally become an accepted term and now, at Facebook’s whim, we’re supposed to tell people to please “like” our pages? Really?
I started a Facebook ad campaign today for one of my sites that encourages people to “Become a Fan!” But, they can’t now. So, do I re-write my ad copy to say, “Like us today!” God. That sounds like a desperate unpopular kid begging people for friends.
What do you think of Facebook’s change?
I’ve gone dark. I’m off the grid. I’ve become a ghost. Well, sort of. I am speaking, of course, about social media and the ever-increasing privacy concerns that come with posting information about your life online.
It started some time ago with Facebook and MySpace. My profiles were at one time public and anyone could see them. After getting a ridiculous number of unsolicited “friend” requests from people I didn’t know, and even some from people I actually did know, it was time to restrict access to those profiles.
I also had a accounts with, Plurk, Plaxo, SocialThing, FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, Digg, Newsvine, Reddit, Brightkite, Ping.fm and a bunch more sites. Clearly, I was on the social media overkill bandwagon. Well, no more.
In what a friend called a “scorched Earth campaign” against social media, I went through and canceled virtually all of my social media accounts, especially those that I don’t use any more. I was a bit shocked to discover that I had so many different accounts with varying degrees of personal information available to the world - some of it extremely outdated.
Here’s a partial list of the social media accounts I deleted:
- MySpace
- Digg
- Orkut
- FriendFeed
- SocialThing (bought by AOL, discontinued)
- MyBlogLog
- Squidoo
- 12seconds.tv
- Ping.fm
- Plaxo
- Brightkite
- Blogger (two blogs)
- Photobucket
- Plurk
Here’s a list of social media accounts I decided to keep, but with a restricted privacy level:
- Delicious
- Flickr
- Stumbleupon
- Tumblr
- Vimeo
- Wordpress.com
- YouTube
My Facebook is locked down pretty tight. I created multiple friend lists and restricted access to my personal data to less than 90 people, all people I trust. They are either family or friends.
Twitter is set to private and after after pruning my list of “followers,” my list is down to less than 300. So, why the sudden shift in attitude toward social media? There are several reasons, but first, why did I put all that information out there in the first place?
There was a time when I wanted my name, opinions, thoughts and qualifications out there for the whole world to see. I gloated about how I dominated the search engine results pages (SERPs) when you searched for Gary Cope. There was a time when I didn’t even show up on the first few pages. Social media was huge and niche sites were popping up left and right to cater to virtually any audience. Being a web geek and web professional, I felt an obligation to try the new “it” things as they came out.
I still have a personal blog on Tumblr, but I went through all of the nearly 1,700 posts over the last three years and took down any pictures or posts about my son. They’re still there, but are “private” and only I can see them from my admin page. Sure, they might still exist in some search engine cache file, but there’s nothing I can really do about that.
Going forward, however, I have created a password-protected Tumblr site for family and some select friends. It’s a bit of a pain, but it’s better than going completely dark. I also post to Facebook, which is where most of my friends and family are anyway, so it’s not hard to keep them updated.
The recent social media enema was long overdue. I had more accounts than I could remember and more importantly, I felt a need to get my personal info off the web as much as possible. No more pictures of me and my son. Flickr got privatized, as did Twitter and my blog on Tumblr. I no longer feel the need to let the whole world know what I am doing. The world doesn’t really care, but my friends and family do, hence why I locked the sites down.
I realize that I can’t control all of the information available on the Interweb, but I can attempt to limit it.
If you have too many social media accounts to keep track of, or you are concerned about people you don’t know having to much access to your personal information, consider a “spring cleaning,” or “scorched Earth” campaign of your own.
It can be time-consuming and tedious, but once completed, I felt so much more organized and at ease.
If you have questions, comments, suggestions and/or stories to share about your social media experiences, let me know.
We all know one. A person on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn who abuses their status as your social media “friend” by inviting you to join Facebook fan pages every other day, sending out 500 Tweets before lunch, or even worse, sharing links to get-rich-quick schemes.
There are a couple of folks that I know in real life (IRL) and am also “friends” with on Facebook and/or Twitter. But lately, they’ve started to annoy me with their endless recommendations for fan pages and shameless self promotion. The whole thing cheapens the overall relationship and damaged their credibility.
One person in particular has become a shill, not a living breathing human being. Often times they promote worthy causes, but when I get several fan page recommendations a week, I start to tune you out.
Perhaps you are well recognized and have an established personal brand - great! Good for you. Don’t cheapen it by treating your social media friends and followers with disrespect.
Be a person. Be real. If all you do is pimp something or send invites to everyone on your friends list, that’s not how social media works. That’s how spammers work. It’s the fastest way to get un-friended and/or un-followed.
How-to: Create an Auto-Retweet Twitter Bot
I had to set up an auto-retweet bot for the Social Media Club Charlottesville twitter account, and this tutorial was all I needed to get the job done in less than 15 minutes. A little Yahoo! Pipes knowledge is helpful, but even without it, I believe you could pick it up rather quickly.
I know that some of you think of spam when you see the word “bot”, but bots can be extremely useful. In my case, we plan to use the @SMCCville account to retweet the #smccville hash tag so followers of @SMCCville get fed articles about social media and local uses of social media.
(via screencastpro)
Earlier this week I saw an article on CNETNews.com about the city of Bozeman, Montana and how it requires job applicants to hand over the user names and passwords to their social networking sites and other internet-based sites like Facebook, MySpace, Google and Yahoo, so the city could do a complete and thorough background check. This practice has been in place with the city of Bozeman for several years … until yesterday.
According to today’s edition of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the city has suspended the practice. City Manager Chris Kukulski said the city “appears to have exceeded that which is acceptable to our community.” Kukulski added, “We appreciate the concern many citizens have expressed regarding this practice and apologize for the negative impact this issue is having on the city of Bozeman.”
Sorry, but I have to call B.S. on that statement. The city and its citizens have been aware of this policy and have accepted it for several years. Only since the news went viral and international did the city reconsider. Not because the townsfolk suddenly thought it was a bad idea. The negative publicity over a questionable hiring requirement stirrred this pot and Bozeman wanted to stop the bleeding.
Is it a bad policy? I think so. People should have a certain expectation of privacy when it comes to their social networking and online activities. Requiring applicants to provide their user names and passwords (which is a violation of Facebook and others’ terms of service agreements) is tantamount to requiring applicants to have surveillance cameras installed in their’ residences. It is an invasion of privacy.
I understand and respect the city’s intent, which was to fully vet potential employees to hopefully avoid embarrassing surprises, but they went a bit too far. The city said they have merely suspended the policy - not completely abondoned it pending “a more comprehensive evaluation.”
So, stay tuned. Until then, what are you thoughts? Was the city doing the right thing or did they overstep their bounds?
I use Twitter and while I think that is has proven to be more than a medium to broadcast the mundane aspects of our every day lives, this video is still pretty darn funny!
