Posts tagged Online Communities

It’s 2010: Where are you writing and reading?

Jan02
2010 4 Comments Written by Amy Gahran

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed my personal patterns of writing and reading have changed significantly. Some of this has been in response to the changing technology of communication — the rise of social media, in particular. But some of it has also been about where I am in my life and my work.

Here’s a quick rundown of my own changes, and contributing reasons for them. I’d be curious to hear about other people’s personal media evolutions, too. Please share your own experiences in the comments below…

Posted in Amy's Adventures, blogs, community, Conversations, e-readers, emotions, experience, friends, mainstream media, media evolution, mobile, news, podcasts, psychology, relationships, social media, twitter, writing - Tagged Add new tag, delicious, iPhone, Social network, twitter

Facebook Will Eat Your Children

Dec16
2009 1 Comment Written by Amy Gahran

Tom Vilot just sent me this. Probably not far off the mark, given the sleazy way Facebook is messing with privacy settings.

URGENT FACEBOOK UPDATE: As of today, Facebook staff will be allowed to eat your children and pets. To turn this option off, go to settings, then privacy, then meals. Click the top two boxes to prevent the employees of Facebook from eating your beloved children and pets. (Unless you don’t like your children, in which case… Carry on!). Copy this to your status to warn your friends!!!

Posted in fun stuff, privacy, social media - Tagged Facebook, privacy, privacy settings, Protocols, security, Social network, twitter

How Facebook Apps Can Compromise Your Privacy, & How to Fix (Maybe)

Nov18
2009 5 Comments Written by Amy Gahran

I never liked Facebook, and I still don’t, which is why I don’t use it much. My main gripe has always been its badly designed interface which always leaves me confused about where to look and what to do.

But now I have an even bigger gripe about Facebook: How it compromises your privacy via its application programming interface (API).

Posted in development, privacy, problems, social media, usability - Tagged Application programming interface, Computer programming, Facebook, George Kelly, privacy, privacy settings, Social network

Experiment: Great Live Event Coverage for Hire. What do you think?

Oct14
2009 2 Comments Written by Amy Gahran

As I mentioned in my previous post, today I’m liveblogging and tweeting a daylong Las Vegas event by Metzger Associates: Social Media for Executives. It’s a small event for a select group of executives representing several types of companies.

I’m doing this as a pilot test for a new professional service I’d like to start offering: Great live event coverage.

In my experience, most online event coverage isn’t so great. A few folks will be tweeting or blogging in several places, some hashtags will be used, but it’s all rather confusing and inconsistent to follow. Also, a lot of people tend to tweet items like “Jane Doe is speaking at this session now.” Uh-huh… AND….?

Liveblogging/tweeting has turned out to be a real strength of mine — I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. I’ve also had the good fortune to collect a sizable Twitter following among folks whose interests in media, business, and other fields overlap with mine — and who enjoy my particular blend of reporting, analysis, and attitude. (Or at least I guess they do, because every time I do live event coverage my Twitter posse swells noticeably and those folks tend to stick around afterward.)

I do a lot of live event coverage via Twitter and CoverItLive. For instance, earlier this month for my client the Reynolds Journalism Institute I liveblogged/tweeted J-Lab’s Fund My Media Startup workshop at the 2009 Online News Association conference.

So, being a longtime entrepreneur always on the lookout for new opportunities, I’m looking for ways to offer live event coverage as a service for my clients. Today’s event is an experiment on this front.

I want to figure out how this service could work in a way that would appeal to my Twitter posse, maintain my integrity and independence, and provide value to clients who’d pay for it.

Here are some of the issues I’m wrestling with, that I’d welcome your thoughts on…

Posted in accountability, Amy's Adventures, business, collaboration, community, conversational media, development, help needed, journalism, PR & marketing, processes, services, social media, social networks, twitter - Tagged Dave Taylor, events, journalism, Mass media, public relations, Social Networking, twitter, Web

Hashtags: Your Social Media Radar Screen and Magnet

May08
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Amy Gahran

Twitter Trending Hashtags: Image by mobatalk via Flickr

Later today I’m giving a talk at an entrepreneur’s group about how you can get more benefit out of social media by using hashtags. I’ve found that these can be exceptionally valuable tools to connect with topics and people. They also can help you make yourself (or a topic, organization, or event that matters to you) much easier to find and connect with.

I’ll be fleshing out these ideas in a later blog post. But for now, here are my main points I intend to make — Plus some resources I will to demonstrate…

Posted in collaboration, community, distribution, networking, PR & marketing, relevance, research, serendipity, social media, tagging, tutorials, twitter - Tagged hashtag, Monitter, Paul Bradshaw, PR, publicity, relevance, research, seesmic, Tag, tools, TweetDeck, twitter, Web

Why Use Twitter? Notes for My Journalism Expo Twitter Training

Apr30
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Amy Gahran

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...: Image via CrunchBase

On Friday, May 1, I’ll be helping to give the free social media training being offered by the Public Media Collaborative for Bay Area people who work for mission-driven organizations — community organizations, church groups, social service agencies, charities, etc. It’s part of Journalism Innovations II: New Work & Ideas for Making the News, an event organized by Arts and Media. Social media training will be offered in English and Spanish.

WHEN: May 1, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. PT
WHERE: McLaren Hall, University of San Francisco (Directions)

I’ll be handling Twitter training, from 1-2:15 pm.

So: What do people who do community- or mission-focused work really need to know about Twitter? First, it helps to know why it works. After that, learning how to use it makes much more sense…

Posted in skills, social media - Tagged Facebook, On the Web, San Francisco, Social Networking, Susan Mernit, TweetDeck, twitter

Hashtags on Twitter: How do you follow them?

Mar08
2009 11 Comments Written by Amy Gahran

TweetDeck: Column-based Twitter applications like Tweetdeck can make following hashtags easy. (Image by Tojosan)

As I’ve mentioned before, hashtags are a powerful tool that allows Twitter users to track what many people (especially people whom you aren’t already following) are reporting or thinking about a particular topic or event.

Here’s the catch: Hashtags aren’t an officially supported Twitter service. They’re merely a convention that Twitter users have adopted on their own, within the 140-character text-only constraints of tweeting. So you can’t really “follow” hashtags through the main Twitter site.

Many third-party Twitter tools and services “play nice” with hashtags — but you must first know what these tools are and how to use them in order to get maximum value from hashtags.

This can lead to a bit of basic confusion, especially among people who are new to Twitter. Specifically, how exactly do you follow a hashtag?…
READ MORE »

Posted in relevance, search, skills, social media, tools, tutorials - Tagged Adobe Integrated Runtime, aggregation, findability, hashtags, Monitter, On the Web, Pete Myers, search, social media, Social network, tagging, tools, tutorial, TweetDeck, twitter

What’s that Hashtag? New glossary tools for Twitter

Mar03
2009 7 Comments Written by Amy Gahran

On Twitter, hashtags are a powerful, simple tool for tracking topics, communities, live events, or breaking news. They make you findable, and they allow on-the-fly collaboration. When you insert one of these short character-string tags beginning with #, you make it easy for Twitter users who don’t already follow you (plus anyone searching Twitter) to find your public contributions to the coverage or discussion on that topic.

The catch is that hashtags are often cryptic — usually because they work best when they’re as brief as possible. So you might stumble across an interesting-sounding tweet containing a hashtag like #wci, #plurk, or #tpb and wonder about its context. Although you can follow a hashtag easily with tools like Twitter Search, Hashtags.org, Tweetdeck, or Twitterfall (which Paul Bradshaw recommended yesterday in Tidbits), those tools don’t easily tell you what a given hashtag means.

Here some promising new tools that can help you quickly put a hashtag in context — or let people easily look up the meaning of the hashtags you launch or use… READ MORE »

Posted in Resources, search, social media, tools - Tagged hashtag, hashtags, On the Web, Paul Bradshaw, Plurk, Social network, TweetDeck, twitter

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