I have long resisted having a fan page on Facebook. It is something about the way I am wired. I never really think that what I'm doing is about me, I just happen to be the guy doing it. Whether it's my many years promoting the GSA Technology Council, our viral success with Tech After Five, or the simple calm of Cigar Therapy, it's been about the groups I get to be around. I like to see what they are doing and I like to build organizations that help people get where they want to go. That's they way I am wired.
So I never had a Facebook fan page... until now.
If you enjoy what were doing then think of it as pat on the back for what were doing. Hopefully one of your friends sees that, comes to one of our events and gets a job, or finds a friend and builds that next great company. I'd love to be some part of that.
And, thank you to everyone who has pressed the button. I appreciate your support.
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Video: Running with the Bulls Presentation on Thursday
It turns out that not everyone is on Facebook. (Who knew?) That means that there are some cool cats who have not yet seen the video that both introduces some of the guys who show up at Cigar Therapy and tells you that if you come on at 4PM on July 9th, you will get to see Keith Rodgers talking about his experience in running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
In this video you get to meet Clifton Adams, Halfway To Habana Greenville, Jon Evans, Keith Rodgers, Phil Yanov, and Russ Davis.
In this video you get to meet Clifton Adams, Halfway To Habana Greenville, Jon Evans, Keith Rodgers, Phil Yanov, and Russ Davis.
Twitter is the new Cocaine. Some advice on how to love and learn from your new bad habit.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Amazon and others are repeatedly and intentionally activating one of your primal fears. They are pressing your buttons again and again until they get you to start pressing your own buttons. They lead you to believe that you are missing out on something. They have you thinking you will be able to find what you are looking for with just one more click. You can't help yourself. When you post a cool tweet, you want to know who responds. When you bring up the Twitter screen, you first check to see how many followers you have and then click on your friends and rivals pages to see how many people are loving following them and not you.
These social websites reward your clicks with more information about your friends, about you, and about what your friends say they think about you. It's information you just can't get enough of. It's like taking personality tests and getting feedback on every answer as you answer. You click yes I like "Fight Club" and poof, you find out five of your friends say they like it too. We are all taking the test, and all answering the questions, and all learning more about ourselves and each other.
What's the win? We get to explore what we're thinking while testing our ideas on others in a relatively safe environment. We don't just think we learn more about ourselves, we actually do. We take our assumptions, allow our friends to take a look at them, and gauge their responses. Sure, this system isn't perfect, but the feedback we get costs us nothing and that means we get to test again and again until we arrive at something that works.
This need to find ways to figure out what we are thinking, what our friends are thinking, and to explore the previously untapped resources within our network of friends is deep seated. These social network have found a way to deliver a running commentary on the way we live our lives instantly, cheaply, and in bulk.
The people who own the systems that help us make these explorations are already rich. The opportunity for us lies in the continued expansion of this new frontier. How can we learn more about others, build our networks, and tap those resources in a way that everyone benefits?
Following just a few simple rules about who we add, who we listen to, how we explore, and how we enter into agreements to create new businesses, I think we're all going to be able to feast upon new worlds of opportunity.
Seven Rules for New Twitterers
-Phil Yanov is @thinkhammer
These social websites reward your clicks with more information about your friends, about you, and about what your friends say they think about you. It's information you just can't get enough of. It's like taking personality tests and getting feedback on every answer as you answer. You click yes I like "Fight Club" and poof, you find out five of your friends say they like it too. We are all taking the test, and all answering the questions, and all learning more about ourselves and each other.What's the win? We get to explore what we're thinking while testing our ideas on others in a relatively safe environment. We don't just think we learn more about ourselves, we actually do. We take our assumptions, allow our friends to take a look at them, and gauge their responses. Sure, this system isn't perfect, but the feedback we get costs us nothing and that means we get to test again and again until we arrive at something that works.
This need to find ways to figure out what we are thinking, what our friends are thinking, and to explore the previously untapped resources within our network of friends is deep seated. These social network have found a way to deliver a running commentary on the way we live our lives instantly, cheaply, and in bulk.
The people who own the systems that help us make these explorations are already rich. The opportunity for us lies in the continued expansion of this new frontier. How can we learn more about others, build our networks, and tap those resources in a way that everyone benefits?
Following just a few simple rules about who we add, who we listen to, how we explore, and how we enter into agreements to create new businesses, I think we're all going to be able to feast upon new worlds of opportunity.
Seven Rules for New Twitterers
- Follow great minds that both reinforce and challenge what you believe about the world.
- Follow some who have great throngs, if only to figure out why people are thronging
- Follow everyone you love and encourage those you love to join in the conversation
- Share only what matters most to you.
- Encourage everyone, because everyone is struggling with something.
- Thank everyone who reaches out to you. It's the cheapest, easiest, and surest way to put a smile on someone's face.
- Share what you have learned about this grand experiment with others. You never know who else might need the benefit of some friends participating in their personal or business growth.
-Phil Yanov is @thinkhammer
How to make Facebook Talk Like a Pirate
In honor of the web ubiquitous holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day, Facebook let's you select English (Pirate) in the language settings and you end up with a screen that looks like this:
How do you set Facebook to talk like a Pirate?
- Go to Settings (top right)
- Choose the Language tab
- From the pull down menu choose English (Pirate)
You may have to go in tomorrow, or even late this afternoon, when you've finally grown weary of all this Piratish Frivolity and turn it back to whatever language you prefer. Settings will be spelled Settins.
NB: Props to TechCrunch.
Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook are passing tablets on the bus
A few times a week I drop by my Linked In, Plaxo, and Facebook accounts and clean up my inboxes in each.
On LinkedIn, I approve those who request to join our groups, and on all of the above I answer the messages that come there and then decide what invitations I am going to accept and which I won't (at this time.)
I've always felt that LinkedIn was the home of my Professional Profile, Facebook was for fun, and Plaxo was just for keeping my multiple address books updated. Increasingly each of these seems to want to perform some of the functions of the other.
Most insidious has been that Plaxo wants to be LinkedIn. They've added professional profile information much like LinkedIn and they keep asking me to fill out my profile. I've ignored the request until today when the screens told me that my profile was 80% complete and I could be 100% complete by answering just a few questions. I fell for it! Telling Plaxo where I went to college and what city I live in made me 100% complete. Sadly, I don't feel any different.
When I was a kid, we created lists of questions in our tablets and then we'd pass the tablet around to friends to collect their answers. Our questions included What's your favorite sport? Who is your favorite singer? (male and female) What's your favorite color? We'd feel great when we had answers to all of these important questions from 25 other kids. No matter how dumb the questions, we'd fill them out with the earnestness that should only accompany an application for citizenship. We loved asking and getting the answers and relished the pages of tablet paper dedicated to this important sociological research.
Now every Professional Social Network has become an online analog of those tablets filled with not very useful information or they've become online dating services asking us these inane questions with the promise of creating meaningful connections with unknown parties.
What's worse is that once I've committed to any of these services, I feel compelled to answer all of the questions in my quest to feel 100% complete. Thanks for playing me Plaxo. I've got something else to talk to my therapist about.
I like red an awful lot.
On LinkedIn, I approve those who request to join our groups, and on all of the above I answer the messages that come there and then decide what invitations I am going to accept and which I won't (at this time.)
I've always felt that LinkedIn was the home of my Professional Profile, Facebook was for fun, and Plaxo was just for keeping my multiple address books updated. Increasingly each of these seems to want to perform some of the functions of the other.Most insidious has been that Plaxo wants to be LinkedIn. They've added professional profile information much like LinkedIn and they keep asking me to fill out my profile. I've ignored the request until today when the screens told me that my profile was 80% complete and I could be 100% complete by answering just a few questions. I fell for it! Telling Plaxo where I went to college and what city I live in made me 100% complete. Sadly, I don't feel any different.
When I was a kid, we created lists of questions in our tablets and then we'd pass the tablet around to friends to collect their answers. Our questions included What's your favorite sport? Who is your favorite singer? (male and female) What's your favorite color? We'd feel great when we had answers to all of these important questions from 25 other kids. No matter how dumb the questions, we'd fill them out with the earnestness that should only accompany an application for citizenship. We loved asking and getting the answers and relished the pages of tablet paper dedicated to this important sociological research.
Now every Professional Social Network has become an online analog of those tablets filled with not very useful information or they've become online dating services asking us these inane questions with the promise of creating meaningful connections with unknown parties.
What's worse is that once I've committed to any of these services, I feel compelled to answer all of the questions in my quest to feel 100% complete. Thanks for playing me Plaxo. I've got something else to talk to my therapist about.
I like red an awful lot.
Facebook apps (games) we like
Here are the Facebook games we mentioned in today's segment of the Your Day radio show.- Packrat - this is a particular favorite of mine. You collect stuff. I can't help myself.
- Scramble - This is like Boggle on the internet. I happen to have a friend who can beat you every time. I am a much easier mark.
- Scrabulous - It looks remarkably like the board game Scrabble. They make the gentle claim - "Play the world's favorite online word game for free!" You decide for yourself.
Please join us and other Your Day fans on Facebook.
Avoiding perils while establishing your professional network online
This article first appeared in GSABusiness.
I have received numerous emails over the past few weeks for companies purporting to clean up my image online. I feel pretty sure that they have never actually looked at the information about me that’s online. These firms offer to survey my reputation, finding and eliminating anything that might harm my opportunity to do business with reputable companies. That must be a lost cause. Google, Yahoo, and their search engine brethren, along with the Internet Wayback machine make removing things from the internet nearly impossible. I don’t know what these companies really could do for me, but I think a better strategy might be to make sure that I am regularly generating helpful information about myself and posting that to the internet myself.
The good news is that there are several quality places you can post information to the internet about yourself. Not only can those places help to establish or enhance your reputation online, they can set the tone for conversations you might have in real life. Being a technology afficianado, I headed to these networks pretty early and have had a chance to field test them. Although not everyone uses the networks, I have been lucky with them. More than once, I’ve walked into a meeting with someone I had never met before and had them say “We haven’t met, but I’ve read about your work on the Internet…” It allowed us to get down to the business of our business much quicker. We bypassed the time normally spent establishing credentials. So, how can you get started in establishing an online reputation?
First, realize that there are a number of online networking websites to choose from. The ones you are most likely to have heard of are MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I have listed them in what I think are the order of their popularity. Let’s consider each in order.
MySpace may be the best known of all the social networking sites, especially since Rupert Murdoch spent $580 Million for it in 2005. The site boasts over 75 million users and is the darling of what appears to be a youth oriented demographic. Today’s front page says that over 75,000 videos have been uploaded today and that the most popular are of “a gas powered blender” and a “crazy dog climbing a ladder.” A quick visit to the front page on any given day will let you know that this may be a fun website to visit, but it is unlikely to enhance your career. Try this link at work ( www.MySpace.com) if the website is unreachable, you are not alone. MySpace is the leading social networking site most likely to be blocked by company based web filters. A report by Barracuda Networks says that 44% of their customers have identified the site as a time waster and blocked it from company desktops. Let’s keep looking.
Next up in order of popularity is Facebook. Launched in 2004 by a couple of Harvard students, Facebook is a relative newcomer to the social networking scene and most that time was aimed at college students. The requirement of a college issues email address in order to register an account has only recently been dropped. Some of Facebook’s early adopters have graduated, however, and the network has matured with them. The site now even allows third party application developers to write little programs that will live inside of Facebook web pages. The programs include network maps, games, and a whole lot of silliness, but there is a business component of facebook as well. Many professional organizations have groups inside of Facebook, and you can connect with peers there. Still Facebook is mostly about fun and pranks and may not feel like a work related activity. That leaves us with…
LinkedIn was built from the ground up as a Professional Network of working professionals. At this writing, over 15 million people have filled out a profile on LinkedIn. Once you have entered your profile on LinkedIn, you can then connect with other people you know and let them know what types of relationships you are interested in exploring professionally. Looking for new vendors, investors, or employees? Chances are you can make a connection with the people you are looking for on LinkedIn. We are inherently social animals, and modern travel and communications means each of us can interact on a regular basis with more people than our forefathers were likely to meet in a lifetime. We use PDAs, Blackberries, Outlook, and other electornic means just to keep track of the people we “know.” LinkedIn takes the electronic version of that Rolodex and allows you to compare and connect with other people you know. Next time, I’ll talk about how to build a killer profile on LinkedIn and how to use it to make the business connections you need.
I have received numerous emails over the past few weeks for companies purporting to clean up my image online. I feel pretty sure that they have never actually looked at the information about me that’s online. These firms offer to survey my reputation, finding and eliminating anything that might harm my opportunity to do business with reputable companies. That must be a lost cause. Google, Yahoo, and their search engine brethren, along with the Internet Wayback machine make removing things from the internet nearly impossible. I don’t know what these companies really could do for me, but I think a better strategy might be to make sure that I am regularly generating helpful information about myself and posting that to the internet myself.
The good news is that there are several quality places you can post information to the internet about yourself. Not only can those places help to establish or enhance your reputation online, they can set the tone for conversations you might have in real life. Being a technology afficianado, I headed to these networks pretty early and have had a chance to field test them. Although not everyone uses the networks, I have been lucky with them. More than once, I’ve walked into a meeting with someone I had never met before and had them say “We haven’t met, but I’ve read about your work on the Internet…” It allowed us to get down to the business of our business much quicker. We bypassed the time normally spent establishing credentials. So, how can you get started in establishing an online reputation?
First, realize that there are a number of online networking websites to choose from. The ones you are most likely to have heard of are MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I have listed them in what I think are the order of their popularity. Let’s consider each in order.
MySpace may be the best known of all the social networking sites, especially since Rupert Murdoch spent $580 Million for it in 2005. The site boasts over 75 million users and is the darling of what appears to be a youth oriented demographic. Today’s front page says that over 75,000 videos have been uploaded today and that the most popular are of “a gas powered blender” and a “crazy dog climbing a ladder.” A quick visit to the front page on any given day will let you know that this may be a fun website to visit, but it is unlikely to enhance your career. Try this link at work ( www.MySpace.com) if the website is unreachable, you are not alone. MySpace is the leading social networking site most likely to be blocked by company based web filters. A report by Barracuda Networks says that 44% of their customers have identified the site as a time waster and blocked it from company desktops. Let’s keep looking.
Next up in order of popularity is Facebook. Launched in 2004 by a couple of Harvard students, Facebook is a relative newcomer to the social networking scene and most that time was aimed at college students. The requirement of a college issues email address in order to register an account has only recently been dropped. Some of Facebook’s early adopters have graduated, however, and the network has matured with them. The site now even allows third party application developers to write little programs that will live inside of Facebook web pages. The programs include network maps, games, and a whole lot of silliness, but there is a business component of facebook as well. Many professional organizations have groups inside of Facebook, and you can connect with peers there. Still Facebook is mostly about fun and pranks and may not feel like a work related activity. That leaves us with…
LinkedIn was built from the ground up as a Professional Network of working professionals. At this writing, over 15 million people have filled out a profile on LinkedIn. Once you have entered your profile on LinkedIn, you can then connect with other people you know and let them know what types of relationships you are interested in exploring professionally. Looking for new vendors, investors, or employees? Chances are you can make a connection with the people you are looking for on LinkedIn. We are inherently social animals, and modern travel and communications means each of us can interact on a regular basis with more people than our forefathers were likely to meet in a lifetime. We use PDAs, Blackberries, Outlook, and other electornic means just to keep track of the people we “know.” LinkedIn takes the electronic version of that Rolodex and allows you to compare and connect with other people you know. Next time, I’ll talk about how to build a killer profile on LinkedIn and how to use it to make the business connections you need.
Did Facebook kill Yahoo 360?
Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang started to answer the question Where does Yahoo! head next? on the Yahoo blog today. The answer is necessarily incomplete, they can't go around telegraphing all of their moves, although it's hard to say who would follow them. Still Yang says that Yahoo's social blogging, friend networking, Web 2.0 ghost town, Yahoo 360 will be transitioning into some new, and apparently undecided upon Yahoo profile which might be Yahoo's reportedly underwhelming, but still invitation only Yahoo Mash.Never fear, they won't through out your stuff, even if they don't know where they'll be moving it to. According to the Yahoo 360 Blog:
- We will preserve your Yahoo! 360 blog content, profile photo, nickname, and friends lists during and after the transition
- We will provide the right tools to move your blog content;
- We will give you ample notice before this transition begins in early 2008.
What they really don't want right now is to lose any more subscribers. The fact is that they don't know what comes next and they say as much in their own blog. They'll kill whatever makes sense and hopefully come up with something better. If they do come up with something better, we'll all know right away, because despite the popularity of Facebook and others, Yahoo is still a primary launch point for those who aren't completely familiar with the web. If the service is cool, they will hear about it from their friends in Yahoo Groups, or will see it on Yahoo's portal page and dive in headlong. Most Web 2.0 startups hope that they will build a better website and that they will get lucky and eventually be discovered and then build traffic and havee a real business. Yahoo needs no such luck. They simply need to build a better, more novel approach to Facebook and the masses will come easily. No matter that they have had lots of attempts that didn't work, they have the seed audience. What they now need is to get their act together.Facebook didn't kill Yahoo 360. Yahoo engineered the demise of Yahoo 360 by building and delivering a platform that was more interesting to the advertisers than the users. In the end, not even the advertisers cared.
Facebook is napping
It looks like Facebook is taking a nap:
Does this mean that at this moment, and perhaps for some hours, that nobody has been logged on to Facebook? It's not even 7 AM EST as I write this, so the outage was, in my way of thinking, overnight. If Facebook had been unavailable during the work day, then the nations' economists would have probably seen a noticeable jump in America's productivity.
Does this mean that at this moment, and perhaps for some hours, that nobody has been logged on to Facebook? It's not even 7 AM EST as I write this, so the outage was, in my way of thinking, overnight. If Facebook had been unavailable during the work day, then the nations' economists would have probably seen a noticeable jump in America's productivity.
Increase your Inbox Happiness by 98%!
Is that even possible? I don't know, but there exists a group of Xobnis working on a secret project that they say will deliver exactly that.
If you think you'd like to be among the first to be let in on the secret, then follow the link above and ask. By the way, VentureBeat says that Xonbi has an "email me instead" app that allows for Facebook users to get notified outside of Facebook instead of inside.
psst! Xobni is inbox spelled backwards.
If you think you'd like to be among the first to be let in on the secret, then follow the link above and ask. By the way, VentureBeat says that Xonbi has an "email me instead" app that allows for Facebook users to get notified outside of Facebook instead of inside.
psst! Xobni is inbox spelled backwards.
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