Change status: Facebooking and Twittering for a new world
How to use status updates — like the ones you post to Facebook and Twitter — to help drive social change.
Love your leaks
How do you create a site that keeps people on your pages? By creating a site that's easy to leave.
Web 2.0 and Your Organization – Event Hosted by Eventbrite
Coming to Toronto in July: the workshop that I developed with Jason Mogus on how organizations can effectively use social media tools. Join us, and please encourage your friends and colleagues to attend.
The true meaning of Facebook
Why invest in an online community if Facebook is going to knock you out of the game?
Accord Weather
Freaky Facebook bug?
Anna Strom just invited me to join a group for people whose babies were delivered by Pacific Midwifery. After I joined the group, I went to the “invite people to join” page, and saw a list of all the pending invitations, with the message that “19 invitations have not been sent”, and a “send” button waiting for me. I hit send, and all the people on that list who happened to be in my friend list got the message, but the remaining 14 are waiting there for Anna. But….what up, Facebook? That is one weird bug.
Turn It Off! British Columbia – The Pledge | 30 Days of Sustainability
On May 16th, I’m turning off…
1. My hair dryer (so no cracks about the ‘do, ok?)
2. All the #@*!!## beeping, noisy kids’ toys in our house. Let them play with carbon neutral, quiet blocks for the day.
3. My TV. I can read the American Idol results online. 😉
Why would I live without all that electrical goodness, even for one day?
Because May 16th is “Turn It Off! BC” — a day for people across the province to turn off their lights and other non-essential electronic and electrical devices. We’re going to show the world that BC-ers don’t just talk the talk on sustainability — we’re prepared to talk in the dark.
Please join me by:
1. Forwarding this message to three (or more) of your Facebook friends (instructions below)
2. Joining the Turn It Off! BC Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/gr
3. Taking the Turn It Off! pledge at http://30daysofsustainabil
To turn YOUR friends off….
1. Select this message (everything down to where it says THANKS!), copy it, and then hit the “share” link (above if you’re reading this in a profile, below if it’s a message in your inbox).
2. Choose the “send a message” tab, and paste this text into the body of your message.
3. Edit the list at the top of this message to replace one of my pledges with your own (or replace all 3 items).
4. Enter the names of 3 of your friends in the “To” field (Facebook will help fill it in), slap on a subject line (“Can you turn it off?”) and hit “send”.
And while you’re at it, why not post to your profile or your wall, too?
Facebook will keep us together
….love is subscribing to someone’s Facebook updates on your cell. The uncanny thing is how quickly Rob’s cell rings once I hit the return key.
10 things I’ve cut out to make time for Facebook
If only I’d known I needed to cut TWENTY things so I’d have time for Twitter, too.
Falling for Facebook
I'm besotted with Facebook. I can see it becoming the primary way that I — and many other people — interact online. So if you aren't on Facebook already, join now. Now.
Still here? Don't tell me, you need actual reasons to join. Fine, here goes:
- It's huge, and it's growing. While Facebook started as a network for college students, it opened up to anyone who wanted to join in September 2006, and grew more than 75% — to almost 25 million users — by February. I haven't found numbers more recent than that, but I can say that between 1-3 people in my own personal address book (1500 email addresses) are joining every day.
- Your friends are already there. If you import/connect to your address book when you sign up , you'll discover all the folks you know who are already on Facebook. This is a great way to keep in touch with them. You can even find out who in your universe is already on Facebook, before you sign up yourself.
- It mixes business with pleasure. Unlike LinkedIn, which feels like some sort of massive résumé swap, Facebook brings a personal side to its user interactions. More than half of my Facebook friends are colleagues or professional acquaintances, and now I'm finding out about their personal passions as well as their professional pursuits.
- It's one-stop shopping. Facebook offers blogging, photo sharing, messaging, web-to-mobile communications, social networking, and groups.
- It's a window on your world. Once you've added your contacts to your list of Facebook friends, your Facebook home page will be the best place on the web for you to find out what's going on with the folks you know. My favourite part of Facebook — the thing that makes it truly addictive — is checking in to see what's going on with all my friends and groups. I can see my friends' latest status reports, their latest new friends and groups, their notes, their photos….all in one place. The best way to get how cool this is is to take a look, but I don't think I can really share a screenshot because that would mean sharing details on my friends' activities. And that underlines what is so great about the Facebook feed: it feels far more personal than what you'd normally see on the wide open web.
- It's pretty. God knows, I've fallen in love with my share of social media tools, but most of them have required me to look past a barebones or even downright ugly interface in order to appreciate the inner beauty of content sharing, social networking, or whatever. In contrast, Facebook has a very polished interface.
- It can help you connect with your community. Facebook has now got an API — application programming interface — that lets people extend Facebook with all sorts of little applications and enhancements. (Check out some of the options so far.) And that API is going to see Facebook integrated into more and more 3rd party sites. If you find it easier to connect with your members, supporters, customers or friends on Facebook than to lure them into registering on your own site (and for most organizations, it will be MUCH easier to connect via Facebook) you need to start thinking now about how you can integrate Facebook's community and functionality into your own site.
I'll have more to say about Facebook — and especially about the options for integrating Facebook with external web communities — in the coming weeks. But if you want to understand why this matters, you need to join Facebook now. And once you do, be sure to add me as a friend!