Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

We’re big fans of SlideShare, a handy social site for sharing presentations online. Posting your presentations has always been relatively easy, and now if you use PowerPoint 2007 (Windows only) it’s even easier. SlideShare has released the SlideShare Ribbon add-on to PowerPoint. Check out this introductory slide stack for more information:

I’m a Keynote guy myself, but if you try this out let us know what you think.

Check out this neat video I came across today–it presents a real-time visual representation of activity and networking happening on Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim Knight began using Twitter as a communication tool for coaches. It’s gaining some traction, and many of you have begun following both me and Stratepedia.

If this is the first you’ve heard of Twitter, fear not–EDUCAUSE has released a brief overview of Twitter and its application to learning that’s as good as any introduction I could write. Better yet, visit Twitter, sign up for an account, and give it a try for yourself. Many people suggest that’s the only way to get what it can do.

I’m not a Twitter pro by any means–I only post a couple of times a day at the most, and, last I checked, I could still count my followers on my fingers and toes. But I’ve stumbled upon a few little things along the way to make using the service a bit less cumbersome.

1. Get a client. A Twitter client is a standalone program you download to your computer and configure to keep an eye on your Twitter account. This means you don’t have to go to the Twitter webpage each time you want to post or read others’ posts. I use a Mac client called Twitterific (the free, ad-supported one) on both my computer and my iPhone. More clients are available on Twitter’s downloads page, and even more can be found on the Twitter Fan Wiki. If you find a good one, tell us about it in the comments below (and/or in your Twitter stream).
2. Make replies trackable. This makes more sense in action than in words, so try this: Next time you’re replying to someone’s tweet (or just trying to get their attention), begin that tweet with the person’s username preceded by an @. For example, if you wanted to reply to something I said on Twitter, begin with @ruralocity. Then I can easily track things that are responses to something I posted by clicking my Replies tab. See “What are @replies?” on Twitter’s support site for more information, or just try it yourself by clicking the Reply icon associated with another tweet. One last thing–replies are not personal, private messages! They will show up alongside your tweets, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t say out loud in a crowd.
3. Don’t feel the need to follow everyone who follows you. Having a lot of Twitter followers is a badge of honor for some. Unfortunately, Twitter is also becoming yet another platform for spammers to do their dirty work. Both of these types of users will add you in the hopes that you’ll reciprocate. You can usually tell these types by looking at their following-to-follower ratios. My general rule of thumb? If someone’s tweets look interesting, I’ll follow them back. If I know someone in real life (or in some other, non-Twitter capacity) I’ll follow them back. How you handle it is your call.

The Web 2.0 buzz–that is, the notion of a collaborative web in which people not only consume information, but also contribute to the pool–keeps going. Every day, it seems, a new social networking site hits the scene, promising to help people connect in new, exciting ways. Like any new product, a few thrive and a few more fall by the wayside.

While big, do-it-all network sites like Facebook and Myspace dominate market share and mind share, they’re not for everyone. Some people get concerned by privacy. Others might feel overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of information potentially available from these sites (especially if your online friends are particularly chatty!), or maybe just don’t feel the need to know what their friends are up to every ten minutes.

And I’m here to tell you: That’s OK!

I’m not a big Facebook/Myspace guy, myself–but I do use several social networking sites. My tools of choice tend to be smaller in scope–rather than relying on one site to serve all my needs, I pick and choose from smaller niche services depending on the need I need to fill. In this series, which I’m calling Social Networks for People who Don’t Use Social Networks, I’ll introduce you to a few of my favorites and, hopefully, open up conversation about how these tools might be used in the work done at the CRL and by the SIM Network.

We’ll start with a service I talked about last week called Goodreads, a social network for book readers. If you haven’t done so yet, take a few minutes to read over the article, and maybe even create a Goodreads account for yourself. In the next couple of days, we’ll move on to organizing our virtual bookshelves and growing our Goodreads networks.

Following that we’ll take a look at Delicious, a social bookmarking service we use heavily here at Stratepedia’s global headquarters. We’ve all sent out interesting links to friends and colleagues–Delicious makes this extremely easy and cuts down on e-mail overload in the process.

I hope you’ll join me in exploring these tools and their potential for expanding our base of knowledge further.

Goodreads tutorials

• Share your reading list with Goodreads
• Manage your Goodreads bookshelf
• Hide the “See if more Yahoo friends have joined Goodreads” box from Goodreads
• Adding friends, family and colleagues in Goodreads

One social network I use more than any other, probably, is Flickr, an online service for photo (and, recently, video) sharing. Flickr has thousands, if not millions, of members sharing photos with friends, family, or even the world–for example, I took lots of photos of some of the various national championship-related celebrations this past week, and have made them viewable to anyone who wants to check them out. (Take it from someone who was 2,000 miles away for our previous two trips to the Final Four–Lawrence is an awfully fun place to be when Kansas is still playing basketball in April.)

Today I learned that the Library of Congress has an account on Flickr and is making its vast collection of photography available there. However, the LOC isn’t just putting these photos online to be nice–they need your help. As it states in their user profile, “many of [their] old photos came to [them] with very little description”–so they’re turning to the Flickr community for help, inviting other members to “tag” or keyword photos or offer additional information through Flickr’s comments function. Flickr members have responded–providing keywords, linking to other information about the subject, or just providing encouragement.

I’m sharing this for two reasons: First, I think it’s a really cool idea and an excellent example of crowdsourcing–opening up a problem to a large audience to assign more brains to the task of solving it. Second, the Library of Congress has harnessed the power of an existing tool and an existing network of people for this problem, rather than reinvent the wheel. I’ve done plenty of wheel reinventing in my day, and frankly, there are more fulfilling ways to spend one’s time.

Do you give up control? Probably–but from what I’ve observed in this project (and other, larger crowdsourcing initiatives like Wikipedia) is that altruism tends to outweigh graffiti. And the audience might even be smarter than they’re given credit for.

An interesting new model for publishing went public today. WEBook is an online writing and publishing tool geared toward collaborative authoring–”an online publishing platform that allows writers, editors, reviewers, illustrators and others to join forces to create great works of fiction and non-fiction, thrillers and essays, short stories, children’s books and more.” During its alpha phase of development, 34 writers, editors, and contributors collaborated to produce the thriller Pandora, which is now available for purchase from WEBook’s website. It’s a real, 225-page book complete with ISBN and royalties for contributors. Site members vote on which titles are formally published by WEBook.

Interested in writing a book of your own using WEBook? Join the site for free, then start writing. You can invite colleagues to help author, edit, or review. You can also join in on projects already in progress. This is a brand new service, and I don’t have all the answers on how it works, but it’s a compelling new model for collaborative publishing.

WEBook via Web Worker Daily.