Category: SocialMedia

Useful Links: CS instruction, emergencies, smart bike

Restore meritocracy in CS using an obscure functional language takes on the issue of leveling the playing field in CS classes with an interesting suggestion. What do you think of this idea?

In case of Emergency, Update your Facebook status talks about what is happening the the world of social media and how it’s changing the way we respond to everything, emergencies included. You can find out about an Emergency Social Data Summit set for tomorrow and how to follow the discussion that takes place there.

I’m smacked into silence by this one. Apple Patents Smart Bike.

Can Twitter’s new Suggestions for You Feature make you a power Tweeter?

With Discovering Who to Follow, Twitter let the world know that things were changing in Twitterland.

The change is the addition of Suggestions for You to the Twitter Find People menu. The suggestions are personalized and based on the people you follow and the people they follow. Recommendations for you also come from account profiles.

Twitter has had a Browse Interests tab in the Find People options for quite a while. I’ve found some people I wanted to follow that way. But Twitter thinks it has a better way to help me find exactly the right people to follow.

When the news of Suggestions for You first appeared, only about 10% of Twitter users got to try it. Apparently, The Bloggess was one of them. See Oh twitter. I don’t know whether I should feel touched or insulted. Keep in mind that The Bloggess is really good with Photoshop. Just sayin’.

Quite a few of the 90% of Twitter users who didn’t get it right away went on Twitter asking where it was. Others found it a good idea and helped spread the word.

Twitter apes Facebook with Suggestions for You – Sounds like a pretty good idea for those looking for friendship http://bit.ly/daonJk #EFCGMon Aug 02 17:20:02 via HootSuiteDeanna Alexander
DeannAlexander

Early images of how it would all work appeared at Mashable in Twitter Starts Offering Personalized Suggestions of Users to Follow and TechFemina in Twitter adds the ‘Suggestions For You’ tab.

A few days later, Twitter temporarily suspended the Suggestions for You testing. so that it could be rolled out for all users. A few people encouraged Twitter to keep it gone, gone, gone.

Dear @Twitter I want NO “Suggestions for ME” ! RT @TweetSmarter Twitter Has Disabled TheNew”Suggestions for You”Feature:http://j.mp/d5Yxm1Wed Aug 04 10:45:43 via Seesmicteresa benassi
tebenas

By now it’s popped into your Twitter account. When I noticed it in mine, I looked to see who was suggested for me. The first four suggestions were an Albuquerque local (my profile says I’m from Albuquerque), a music site (I follow several musicians), and a couple of web development guys (I follow lots of webdev people). On the mark for me, I thought. As I dug deeper into the recommended people, I found a few BlogHers, a few more Albuquerque folks, some more webdev people. Most suggestions were a good match for me.

twitter suggestions

Some were not anyone I’d want to follow. They were suggested because people I follow follow them. If you’re sure you’ll never follow someone, you can use the Hide link, and you’ll never see that name suggested again.

I thought the interface was easy. The account bio is there to help you, a follow button is right there. The only missing piece for me was that you can’t assign someone you decide to follow to one of your existing lists right there on the page.

Based on the suggestions, I decided to follow Nick Finck, Scott Fegette, Tim Berners-Lee and Lisa aka scenariogirl. And I’ll keep looking at the list of suggestions, because I thought they were accurate for my interests. My history with finding people to follow on Twitter has been rather random. This is a way to focus. I wonder how well it would work if I didn’t already follow a few hundred people and have relevant keywords in my bio. I don’t think it would be helpful to someone just starting out on Twitter.

Have you tried it? What did you think? Is it useful or is it another big publicity drum roll over nothing special? Do you agree with the sour grapes tweeter I quoted above or are you a convert? Take the poll!

[polldaddy poll=3595637]

[Cross posted in a somewhat different version at BlogHer.]

What’s all this about Facebook Questions? I’m just asking.

[Cross-posted at BlogHer in a slightly different version.]

Facebook rolled out the first baby steps toward the new Facebook Questions yesterday with an announcement on the Facebook blog: Searching for Answers? Ask Facebook Questions.

To ask a question to the community, just click the “Ask Question” button at the top of the homepage. You can also ask questions about your friends from their profiles, similarly to how you would post on their Walls.

Not everyone has an “Ask Question” button yet. Just a few users are included in the beta testing. When you get it, it will look like this.

facebook questions

If you’ve used Yahoo! Answers or Quora, you know what Facebook Questions is about. You ask a question, you get crowdsourced answers. (Liz Gannes points out at GigaOM that Questions is very similar to Quora, a site started by former Facebookers.)

The defining feature for Facebook users to keep in mind is that Facebook Questions are public. Public to the whole Facebook population—all 500 million members. This is not a private conversation among you and your friends. This is a public as Twitter’s public timeline. Which means there are a lot of brains out there with the information you seek. It also means you need to use it with the awareness that it’s totally public. You cannot ask an anonymous question. Your name is attached.

It isn’t a status update, it isn’t a comment, it isn’t a game or a chat. It’s a way to get your questions answered. You hope the question is answered by someone who knows what they are telling you, but there’s no guarantee of correctness with Facebook Questions. Good answers do get voted up, however.

A very enthusiastic review at ReadWriteWeb in Why Facebook Questions Could be Zuckerberg’s Dream Come True states,

Company founder Mark Zuckerberg, wrong as he is about many things like privacy, has said that his goal with Facebook is to build empathy and connection between different people all around the world. If he was in it for the money, he would have taken Yahoo’s $1 billion offer years ago and run. That goal of cultural change may very well be served better by Questions than by any other Facebook feature to date.

Right, we all just want world peace. Will Facebook Questions help get us there?

A few other features include photo questions such a “what bird is this,” taking polls about questions, tagging questions with important keywords, and the ability to follow specific questions that you have an interest in.

One observer, in Facebook Questions: A Potential Threat to Google Search thinks Facebook Questions will do away with search. Search provides instant answers. You have to wait for someone to take on your question with the crowdsourced questions sites. I don’t think the two are in competition. Yahoo! Answers and Ask.com haven’t eliminated search.

What do you think of the Facebook Questions? Will you use it when it rolls out to your account? Do you think it can engender meaningful discussion? Thoughtful answers?

Old Spice: it’s been around forever and it’s still leading edge

How the Old Spice Videos are Being Made. How the Old Spice ads use social media to create a huge success. In case you don’t read what women are talking about that often, let me assure you that the Old Spice ads are getting talked about by women.

A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that’s just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here’s how it’s going down.

A lot of people have hung up a shingle saying they are social media experts in the last couple of years. Campaigns like this show you just what a true social media expert can do.

Useful links: social media, mobile YouTube, Big Web Show

No, You Can’t Automate Social Media from Techipedia is a thoughtful post about people who are trying to build a social media campaign based on automation.

While the Techipedia article needs no help making its point, there’s a similar piece at Web Worker Daily called 10 Ways to Really Connect Through Social Media that is good.

YouTube Mobile Goes HTML5. Noteworthy in my opinion not because Google’s YouTube effort rivals the iPhone app but because it rivals Adobe Flash software. Watching HTML5 infiltrate the market is so interesting.

The Big Web Show production hosted by Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman, is available not just on the web but on iTunes. Dan Benjamin has several other web related shows available from iTunes. If you haven’t looked at what Dan and Jeffrey up to, you should check them out. It’s definitely an educator’s goldmine of a resource. A good starting point is Liz Danzico on Web Education.

Useful Links: more broadband, google.cn, social media day, iPhone dev

Unleashing the Wireless Broadband Revolution from the POTUS promises more broadband. We need it.

Is it google.cn or google.hk? Either way, it’s a workaround for searching in China. See An Update on China.

It’s Social Media Day. Mashable wants you to attend a meetup in your area to celebrate your social medianess.

Getting the hang of iPhone development has resources to help you get started developing for the iPhone.