A Post Entitled How to fake being social on social networks
Updating three social networks daily sounds like an easy task. But what if your goal is to update these sites a certain number of times in specific ways, but after a busy week, you realize you may have updated each site with a status update daily, but forgotten to accept friend request or respond to messages. So for this to do list item, I will define what specific updates I would like to do daily.
- Twitter daily actions
- Check and respond to direct messages
- Check and respond to Mentions
- Send three relevant status updates daily
- Facebook daily actions
- Check and respond to inbox messages
- Update business pages
- Happy Birthday greetings
- Check and respond to group / page discussions
- Send three relevant status updates
[Etc, etc]
via kikolani.com
… what the hell? I’ve never needed a reminder to check messages people send me. You just read them. If you are too busy, you read them when you’re done or need a bit of a break. This stuff shouldn’t be a chore. It shouldn’t be so unintuitive that you need a fucking list to remind yourself that you give a shit what your ‘friends’ are saying to you!
Oh, and please, don’t forget to ‘send three relevant status updates daily’. It hardly matters if you don’t have anything interesting to say, does it? Just knock up some drivel about how to sell your crap on Twitter without looking like you’re just trying to sell your crap.
I should probably just not read blogs like this…
A Post Entitled A/S/Labour?
Twitter spam is no laughing matter - but this direct message from a Cardiff AM made me LOL…
A Post Entitled Conversationlist: A conversational approach to Twitter lists
To be a little more specific, a “conversationlist” is a Twitter list of the people that you talk to (and about) on Twitter. The list is automatically updated daily, so that it always reflects the people that you are paying attention to right now. If you @reply (or @mention) someone, they’re added to your list. If you stop talking to that person, they drop off your list.
I’m late discovering this Twitter service, but I’m glad I finally found it. I wondered why I kept dropping on and off some lists! My new conversationalist list is now up and running. They also give you some neat information about how you fit into others networks: conversationlist.com/Foomandoonian
A Post Entitled Good password tips: A lesson from @dcurtis
- Pick a fairly long password that is a mixture of letters, cases, numbers and special characters.
- Don’t write it down anywhere, or send it to 13,000 strangers on Twitter.
A Post Entitled Twitter introduces local trends
I mention this for the benefit of those who may be unaware, although I
see ‘Local Trends’ is a local trending topic, so I guess you knew!
It’s a much needed improvement.
though (because I know they read this!): Can we have multiple trending
regions? I’d like to be able to monitor the UK and Cardiff, and be
able to easily differentiate the two.
A Post Entitled Notes from the Cross Party Digital Group #digitalwales
These are my notes from the first meeting of the Cross Party Digital Group. Check out my earlier post for what this was all about, and you can also check the Twitter hashtag #digitalwales for some other backchannel chatter. Turnout was rather good, filling the medium-sized conference room with suits. Rory Cellan Jones kept everything on target, with only a few sidelines into the news of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to remove his content from search engines, and another chap who for a moment I honestly thought was going to ask the Google lady why his site wasn’t ranking well. The key nuggets to take away were:-
Everyone on the web is equal. The voice of one blogger can be as loud as yours. You’re going to have to come to terms with that. Resisting or denying it will get you nowhere.
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Release your data so others can use it. (I was disappointed there wasn’t more said about this - hopefully it will be a bigger theme for the next group meeting)
- Go where people already are. The platforms are there. People are already using them. Join them.
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Karina Brisby suggested that the Assembly should “Embrace the crazy”. She said that you can always defer issues, promise to give answers later, but that you should be prepared to take anything on board. (I wonder if she knows how crazy some locals are).
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Run regular blogger briefings. Bloggers are not as high-impact as the mainstream media, but what they write often has much greater value to a smaller audience. They are serving an important long tail.
- According to Jag Singh “Wales has the lowest takeup of social networks”. He was the most pessimistic/realistic of the panel in this regard.
- Work with people with what interests them. Give people a hook, something to get them using the technology. Great example: Pigeon fanciers who needed to use the internet to share their stats.
- What is really so important about new media and technology, and how can you convey that?
- The need to tell a story to make it relevant.
Interesting footnote: There was no real information on the web about this Digital Group evening, so when Rory mentioned it on Twitter beforehand, he linked to my blog post. Go figure!
A Post Entitled How to spot a Twitter follow bot
It’s not that hard frankly! I’ve attached a graph showing the last three months of followers and following for the @web_cardiff account, and you can see the pattern clearly: The green line is the bot. It follows a bunch, waits a few days and unfollows those who didn’t follow back. Repeat. (My graph isn’t 100% accurate, but you can see the numbers for yourself: followers / ‘friends’.)
What do you think? Is this bad practice? In this case, the information isn’t bad - a few links go to the owner’s site, but most point to genuinely useful resources. Friendly spam or useful resource worth promoting in this way?A Post Entitled My Twitter lists
So it turns out that making Twitter lists is really boring. Still, if it means an end to the noise that was #followfriday, then it’s worth a bit of effort up front. My lists are (and will forever be) a work in progress. I have made five groups so far, and in each I have included mostly those who I personally get a lot of value out of. I’ve tended to leave out the big celebs who already get too much exposure, but the likes of Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg do still appear. My lists so far:Thanks to everyone who has included me in their lists. Mostly I have been filed under Cardiff/South Wales categories, but I’m especially pleased to be included in: @SarahNicholas/imaginary-ppl, @worldofoddy/funny-and-or-interesting, @dsml/smarterthanyouravebear, and of course, @JohnGreenaway/occasional-hat-wearer
A Conversation Entitled ...meanwhile on Twitter
- Simon Pegg: I took the Simon Pegg quiz on the Dave website and scored 11/12.
- Edgar Wright: @simonpegg What was the question you failed to get right?
- Simon Pegg: @edgarwright The Q was 'Name the director of Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.'
- Edgar Wright: @simonpegg I wouldn't have got that one either.
- Edgar Wright: @simonpegg I too got 11 out of 12. The question I got wrong was "What accent is Simon Pegg doing in Star Trek?"
A Post Entitled Twitter dragon mascot - update
Made some progress on this tonight, mostly just adding the grass to imitate the Welsh flag a bit more. Still not finished though.
A Post Entitled Twitter dragon - a mascot for Welsh tweeters
A simple mashup of the Twitter cartoon bird identity and ‘Y Ddraig Goch’ that appears on the Welsh flag. It’s not finalised yet, but it’s nearly there. When I look at it again in a few day, I’ll probably spot exactly what needs to be tweaked to make it just right. Of course, feedback at this stage is often useful too. :)
I’m thinking about putting him on a grassy backdrop, to imitate the Welsh flag even more.
