So important I have my very own website…
You may have noticed a lack of posts – this has been partly caused by the death of my Blackberry. Without it on the go communication has been harder so less photos and Tweets on the move.
It’s interesting in a way how much technology is used on a daily basis in these modern days.
Hopefully soon a shiny new replacement Blackberry will be mine and I can blog, tweet and post random pictures again to my hearts content!
These are probably the big 3 so called “social” networking sites (I’m not sure what the point of the word social is, what’s the other choice? Anti-Social networking where people go to discuss their ASBOs?)
I’m interested in discovering how people are using these, and more importantly – are they using them differently.
For a while I linked up Twitter and Facebook – this annoyed Facebook users who didn’t want their stream littered with all the Tweets. (They are presumably happy with latest quiz results and finding out “What type of fruit you are?”)
Step 2 was to use selective twitter and use the #fb hash-tag to update Facebook if I thought it was interesting enough. In fairness nothing is that interesting but less stops FB being swamped.
Then we come to Ping.fm – used by the great and the good to update millions of networks at once. Brightkite, Jaiku, YouAre, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn all updated with one swift click.
This has always struck me as an impersonal way of updating a status – mainly because of this nagging belief I have that different audiences really don’t want the same message.
Twitter anything goes – in the main it’s just noise. Apparently you can lose followers by mentioning Britain’s Got Talent too much (it was more than @4NBrentCross could take) but the mix of business, pleasure, commentary, links, reviews and randomness seems to work.
Facebook – I’m not too sure what the point of Facebook is. I think I am concluding that it serves little point from a business point of view. From a keeping in touch aspect it might serve some point, however I’m fairly sure I don’t really have 300 ‘friends’ and I expect a fair number of them couldn’t care less what I’m doing anyway.
LinkedIn is the mystery one – does anyone ever read status updates on it? If so why? What are they looking to get from it. It’s business orientated so linking Twitter to it is pointless for most Tweets, the groups – well the ones I read are so slow moving as to be almost moribund.
As an aside Brightkite - might be worth a look – especially if you want to “target” people near you. Also Mobypicture is useful if you want to share images and video around the web.
All in all I’m not sure what this post is about now but perhaps it is saying treat individual “networks” as just that – individual, try to target the people you are communicating with information that is relevant to them and where they are reading it.
Last night, whilst watching the wonderful “Come Dine With Me” I twittered about the joys of the BT Vision on-demand service. The morning I was being followed by @BTCare.
Good to see BT monitoring their brand on Twitter, but did they really care?
A while back I got a Sentata Sports viewing card, however it has never worked. I wasn’t bothered to the point I was going to spend half an hour waiting on the phone to talk to someone so I let it slide. No doubt great sporting moments have passed me by in the meantime but I’m sure I’ll live.
Anyway since @BTCare had decided to follow me and comment on my viewing habits I decided to mention to them the problem I was having and a few direct messages (DMs to those in the Twitterverse) the problem was sorted, the card was working and all was good in the world.
So credit to BT for using Twitter and technology to interact and help their customers. I’ve personally always been a fan of BT and apart from a brief spell with NTHell have used their services generally without problems. Others I know have a different view but stories like will do BT no harm.
From Twitters point of view, services like this will be the ones that they will think about making money from, hopefully by the time they do the “big” firms will be fully on the bandwagon. After all, what harm can come from engaging with your customers?
Starting yesterday, and running all this week, sees the Semi Finals of Britain’s Got Talent, the ITV show to find an act for the Royal Variety Performance to show off their talent before the Queen.
This is another show that can be enhanced with the use of Twitter and the #bgt tag to have a conversation and last night amongst the popular trending terms were “bgt” “boyle” and “darth jackson” – three terms that may have bemused any international twitters.
“Boyle” referred to the now international star, Susan Boyle, famous for not being very good looking but being a reasonable singer. If you missed the story you could watch this video which will reveal all the details!
In fairness to her, she was one of the two actually talented acts on the show. The other being Diversity:
The rest varied in quality from a “cute” 10 year old, so the slightly mad Michael Jackson / Darth Vader combination to the utterly deranged Nick Hell and his massacistic tendencies live on ITV.
Exactly why any one would want to watch a madman with a chainsaw live on an entertainment programme is one question, how it got past the “health and safety” people at ITV is another.
It was interesting in the voting as well to see Amanda Holden pass the buck – given the choice of voting for the obviously talented Diversity, or a cute 10 year old who would have been out, she left it to Simon Cowell to give the sensible choice and make the little girl cry on prime time TV.
More talent through the rest of this week. Woo-hoo.
It’s taken me a long time to make any comment about the reality TV show, The Apprentice. I find it interesting watching mainly, like most other people that watch it, because I wonder why the collection of half witted individuals who sign up think they have any chance of actually being good in business.
The problem is the same throughout the early stages, desperate to stand out from the crowd each of the candidates refuse to listen to the others and instead attempt to drive their own agenda, leading to chaos. Also they seem every week to go off half cocked, not researching the tasks or even thinking why they’ve been set it.
Okay, I know the programme is highly edited and the show is there to entertain – otherwise there would be no good reason why Lorraine and Debra would not have been sacked already – but just some sign that the candidates actually think about why Sir Alan has set the task would be welcome.
It is another show that can be enhanced by the Internet. The BBC have an apprentice game where you attempt to predict the person who will be sacked. The game is okay, would would be improved no end if it kept track of users and had tables to compare performance weekly and across the series (there you go BBC, a idea for free – I should get a fiver off next years license for that).
Twitter too can play a part and like with Eurovision last week, following the comments on twitterfall using the tag #apprentice can provide some moments of humour.
My overall feeling however is that The Apprentice is a tired format and, whilst I expect it to be dragged out for another series or two, has possibly run it’s course. Unless people who are actually talented in business sign up instead of candidates who are just a little too bright for Big Brother it might be time to say “Sir Alan, you’re fired.”
I had a Twitter epiphany the other day. I unfollowed loads of people because I never read a word they wrote, nor did I care. I’m not saying they were boring, just with so many people Tweeting the noise became too much.
Some may have in turn unfollowed me. However I really couldn’t care if they did.
Why? Good question. Let me answer. I decided to take the age old advice, control those things you can and ignore those you can’t.
I can’t directly affect how many people, and who, is following me. I can hope that my 140 character insights into events, my life and quick quips are entertaining enough for people to wait for the next one with abated breath, but if they are not I’m not going to loose any sleep over it.
What I can control is who pumps their thoughts into my computer. So I decided to focus instead on people that fall primarily into three different camps:
This rather useful website was one that helped me find some local people, then by following their followers, well you know how it works.
Will this strategy prove useful in the long run – who knows. Certainly it has had the benefit that Twitter is no longer just noise, but posts that might be useful. And I am in no way suggesting that every local person is interesting enough to follow (and those that do not grab will be dumped!) but focusing what I’m looking for can only help improve the whole Twitter experience.
Perhaps the summary of this is too many people seem obsessed with the number of followers (@desperate Please RT, only 4 more to get to 1000 followers, help me get there), but it is not the number that matters.
It’s the value of them. I now value the people I follow. Do you?
So, there we go – the UK did quite well. Norton was certainly acceptable as the “voice-over” man. The Russians did some bizarre and strange half time act with no apparant regard for any health and safety law and Norway won with an insipid song.
That really sums up the evening.
What made the evening more interesting was linking the programme with twitter. Using Twitter Fall and following the keyword #twumpet I could read (some of, there were far too many to read all) the comments in real time, re-tweat some that were interesting and contribute to an online massive dialogue.
This takes the level of viewer interaction to a whole new level. To some extend it’s a real time version of Points of View, but in real time and unfiltered. Add into that the comments of Philip Schofield, Jonathon Ross and other celebrities and it brings a different dimension to the “entertainment”.
Social Media