Notes vs posted items

I’m having a little trouble with the difference between notes and posted items. I’m trying to set up my external blog (http://www.alexandrasamuel.com) to aggregate in my Facebook existence, and I’m not sure whether to aggregate Notes (pros: don’t have to post each note to my profile, so less work; cons: excludes bookmarks and photos) or Posted Items (pros: can include any content I want; con: I’m not sure I want to add every note/photo to my posted items.)

I’d love input from other folks on how they use posted items.

UPDATE: OK, I think the solution is to NEVER post a note. That way I can set my blog to aggregate both my Notes (i.e. my Facebook blog) and my Posted items (i.e. links/photos I’ve shared).

And I’m tagging “facebook” as a friend in this note, so I can see how my aggregator handles that inbound tag.

Facebook vs twitter

I’m now looking for a Facebook status updater that’s as convenient as Twitterbar (which lets me type my status directly into my browser’s address bar, then press a little + sign to post.)

Facebook mobile

Richard Smith alerted me to the fact that Facebook mobile is now available for Canadian cell phone users. And holy cow! did they ever do a smart job setting it up. You can customize what kinds of messages you get (friend requests vs pokes vs wall posts etc), how many messages a day (to cap messaging costs), turn off messages when you’re logged into the website (smart!), send status updates from your phone, lookup numbers in profiles…on and on. I think I have to clear my schedule for the next 3 days while I figure out all the crazy ways to use this for fun and social agitation.

This is definitely the use case for paying fido $10/mo to cover the cost of 1,000 msgs.

Looking for Oberlin alumni in social media/nonprofit technology

I’ve just started a facebook group for Oberlin Alumni in Social Technology” — either nonprofit technology specifically, or social media more generally. I have this theory that the nptech scene must include a fair number of Obies, and I’d love to connect with them. So I’m starting the hunt, and hoping I might even surface some fellow alums who will be at the upcoming NTEN conference in DC. If you’re an Obie and you’re reading this, please join the Facebook group or post a comment here.

Twittering to myself

Twitter seems to be the new addictive social networking app on the block. (For those new to the phenom, it’s a site that lets you tell your friends what you are doing RIGHT NOW, and to see what they’re doing, too.) But I haven’t been able to get into the addiction cycle, because I don’t have any friends. 🙁

Why? Because unlike other social networks — Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster spring to mind — Twitter doesn’t provide a way to mine your address book for fellow Twitter-ers. As far as I can tell, if I upload my address book to Twitter, EVERYONE gets an invitation to be my Twitter buddy, whether they’re Twittering or not. I can see how this helps to spread Twitter, but since I don’t want to annoy my entire contact list with invitations to all the social networks I check out, it makes it very hard to get up and running on Twitter.

So consider this a triple request:

  1. If you’re using Twitter, ping me or add me to your friends list.
  2. If there IS a way to make Twitter scan my contact list for fellow Twitterers, please let me know.
  3. Twitter, if there ISN’T a way to scan my contact list for fellow Twitterers, could you add it? Or could you at least allow me to scan my buddies on other social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook — not just LiveJournal, which is the only one you currently connect to?

Out of my demographic on Facebook

I finally (!) joined Facebook, but here’s as key sign it’s not exactly my demographic: there’s no way to define your relationship to someone as “married”. When Rob added me as a friend, I had the option of describing our relationship as “lived together”, “family” (if I wanted to describe him as a sibling or cousin — but no, it’s not that kind of marriage!) or “dated”. I chose “dated”, and had the opportunity to further clarify that we were “practically married” and are “still together”. Now all I have to worry about are all the ladies cruising Facebook to find the kind of guy who is commitment-ready, but not legally committed….