Category Archives: Social Media
It’s All Marketing
Most of the work I do for clients is around technology. I leave the major marketing efforts to professionals with more experience than I have. Yet, there’s this gray area that I refer to as internet marketing, and it’s something I constantly find myself drawn into. See, the internet can be a strange place and there are a lot of people that don’t fully understand it. Social media has changed marketing dramatically, but not in the way the experts want you to believe. The major change is that now all of us are marketing, all the time.
Facebook Closes the Doors on Democracy
“Fake” Facebook Voting
For a week, Facebook allowed users to weigh in on a number of issues. The oft-criticized website gave users the power, or so they said, to shape policy on everything from sharing data with third-parties to, believe it or not, voting. With over one billion users, you probably have a Facebook account. If you don’t, nearly everyone you know does.
WCAX Appearance #2 – Pinterest
Twitter Has Taught Me Much
Twitter Education in 140 Characters
I sent my first tweet in April of 2009. In nearly three years I’ve learned a lot about the web, humanity and marketing, all from Twitter. I expect the first thing I learned from Twitter was the first thing everyone learns – efficiency. In life I have a tendency to ramble, which clearly has no place in Twitter.
Social Media is Like Television
One of the most frustrating discussions I hear from day to day is the subjective comparison of social media. Is Twitter better than Facebook? What about Google +? Which one is better? Better, better, better. Blah, blah, blah.
I have a different take. It’s not a question of better. It’s a question of audience, features, function… and when you look at it that way, it’s important to realize that, depending on what is important to you, you might need or want more than one social media presence. This applies as much to individuals as it does to organizations.
Think of the variety of television stations, radio stations or even magazines. They’re all different, though you likely have your favorites. We’ve seen social media evolving over the years and it has no signs of slowing down. I suspect that the future will hold many social media outlets and each of us will use more than one. Perhaps one for work, one for a hobby… maybe a general purpose one, like Facebook or Twitter.
They’re not all the same, nor should they be. Maybe now we can stop acting like there’s only room for one.
Google + Initial Impressions
Initial Impressions of Google +
I’m far from the first writing about Google +, so I’ll try and skip the overall review sort of writing. I got in about 36 hours after the initial launch. Most of my usage has been with my colleagues in BYTE, which gives me a nice comparison to Facebook. I have some of my colleagues on Facebook, and clients, and I find I have to be careful with what I post there. While it’s first and foremost my personal social network, as opposed to Twitter which I use more for professional purposes, I am very conscious that it can’t be everything to everyone. Google +, though… I feel like it could be. It’s easy for me to drop people into circles and specify what they get to see, even with each individual post. I like that, and I think it has a lot of potential. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook makes a dramatic revision, possibly even stealing this, in the near future. One of my big complaints is around the web vs mobile experience. On my phone and tablet, Google + rocks. On my netbook… not so much. You can see by the image below that it’s very hard to use the circle function here. (I cropped the image so I could fit it here, but there’s no good way to navigate down to the those circles). In fact, it’s a big pain. I suspect that the web experience is secondary to the mobile experience, and that’s fine. But in order to take down Facebook, the web experience will have to be improved.
If you’d like to follow me on Google +, go here.
Google + Initial Impressions