Reality is Perception

PROBLEM:
I was looking at my Facebook news stream the other day, and I realized that I never see the status updates from several of my closest friends, including my husband!  I know they post and some very frequently.  I’m always switching over to the Most Recent list (linked at the top right of the news feed, in case you didn’t know it was there).

I then realized that I just crossed the 600 friends mark and all their updates, plus all the fans/groups/etc. that I’m part of fall into my news feed as well.  This is really becoming unmanageable!  Like the way I use Tweetdeck to separate out updates by topic/user/group, etc., I want to do that with my Facebook stream as well.

SOLUTION:
I was also playing with my security settings with my friend groups the other day and realized a solution to my over-crowded feed stream!

When you click on the Friends link on the left, it opens the list of my friend groups.

Then when I click on a Friend group, it shows me the stream from only the users in that group!!

Now, it’s kind of a pain to get there (since you have to click twice), but I usually at least have to click once to get to the Most Recent news feed anyway, so one more click won’t hurt for now.  Hopefully, this means that they will or already have made this filtered news feed available externally, so tools like TweetDeck could eventually use them.

You CAN setup columns in TweetDeck by content and by users, but there’s no way to use a Facebook group you already have setup.  You have to setup groups specifically in TweetDeck (hopefully just for now).

Click Add Column, then click the Facebook icon to get the FB options.  You can then select Everyone or Create a New Group, which will guide you to picking the individual FB users you want to keep track of.

Hopefully not a permanent solution, but at least for now I have a way to see the statuses of the people I want to stalk, I mean, keep up with.

Do you know of a better way to do this?  Please leave a comment and do tell!

Two of the main stats I’ve heard since the explosion of Twitter within the last year or so (and other status-like apps like Google Buzz) are the high number of new users, but also the high number of users that abandon their Twitter account shortly after.

From my last post where I talked about the evolution of all these social networking sites, I’m saying the reason why most people don’t stay with Twitter is because of the lack of design in the Twitter website, and users not knowing the best alternatives.

There are multitudes of sites and apps that you can register for and download that you can find by just doing a Google search on “Update Twitter Apps” like this one from TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/the-top-20-twitter-applications/

I’m going to keep this from being a tome of reviews though, and just stick with what I see are the main two options: the Twitter website and Tweetdeck.

The Twitter Website

First off, don’t have a Twitter username that’s longer than 10 characters. Your username (like @bhbeak) is going to be included if someone re-posts what you’ve said into their status, and if you have a 30-character-long username, it won’t leave them any room to comment, etc.  aka. KEEP YOUR USERNAME AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE while still allowing people to recognize who you are. If you need ideas, let me know, and I can tell you what your celebrity name would be.

When you first login to Twitter, it takes you through a Wizard to choose suggested topics like Art & Design, Books, Business, etc. and gives you recommendations of people to “follow” (whose tweets you want to see in your “stream”).  The next step is you can find friends that have Twitter accounts already so you can follow them.

It can search your Gmail, Yahoo or AOL account for your friends that use Twitter and present them so you can choose who you’d like to follow.

Finally, you can search for Twitter usernames (like mine is @bhbeak) and follow them.

Ok, so now you have your Twitter account setup, and you’re even following some people (or at least me ).  Now you have TWO problems..

PROBLEM #1 – Everyone’s statuses that I’m following are all on one screen, and there are only a few that I want to MAKE SURE that I can always see when they update.

The Twitter website provides a solution to this by allowing you to create lists and add people to them.  That way only the people’s status who you add to that list (like a FAVES list) show up there, making it much easier to manage.

You can setup a list by clicking on the New List link on the right side of your Twitter Home page under the Search Box and Lists title.  Give your new list a name, a description (optional), and set the Public/Private flag whether you want anyone to see your list or not.

Once you have it setup, you can go to any Twitter user, or your Followers/Following list and click on the Lists button on the right of their name and click which List(s) to add them to.

Once you have a list setup, you can click on the list under the LISTS section on the right side of the Twitter page to see all the tweets from users in that list.

Setting up lists is great, and a very useful feature that we’ll discuss later, so I’d definitely recommend at least setting up a FAVES list, if not more by topic/group/etc.

However, the problem I have with it is it’s still only one list on the screen at a time?  What if I have 10+ lists and don’t want to have to click through each one?  That’s almost worse than having them all in one stream…

RESOLUTION TO #1 – Enter TWEETDECK

Tweetdeck makes it easy to see each of your friends’ statuses by splitting the screen into columns for you to see them separately, instead of separate pages or (even worse!) one single stream.  How on earth would I be able to really read and follow the statuses I’m interested in when some of the people I’m friends with fill up my stream constantly?  That’s why Tweetdeck is so good.

Once you have Tweetdeck installed, go into Settings – Accounts, you can put in your Twitter login info, and it will automatically pull in your Twitter stream, as well as allow you to post to it.

This brings me to Problem #2:

PROBLEM #2 – Now I have Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn AND NOW Google Buzz, too.. Do I have to update each of them individually?

RESOLUTION TO #2, Part 1 – Tweetdeck can update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all at once!

In Tweetdeck, the same place you put in your Twitter info, you can also put in your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn login info, and it will automatically pull in your streams from those sites, as well as allow you to post to them all at once.  If you don’t want certain posts to go to Facebook, for instance, you can just uncheck Facebook above your post and it will only update what you have highlighted (in the example screenshot, just Twitter will be updated).

It will also do great things like shorten any URLs you put in your post so they take up less room.  There are also fun buttons like adding a photo, or adding your current location, etc.  Play around with those and let me know what you like best or what’s most useful.

RESOLUTION TO #2, Part 2 – Setup Google Buzz to link to your Twitter account!

While everyone’s still trying to figure out what the heck to do with Google Buzz, don’t miss out on building rapport with your Google contacts when it’s really easy to post there.

Login to your Gmail account, click on BUZZ in your left menu, and next to your picture and name at the top, it refers to your number of “Connected Sites”.  Click on that link and it opens up this window, where you can click on the services to connect your Google Buzz to.
- For this example, click on the Add button next to Twitter.
- Type in your Twitter username.
- Twitter will ask you for your password and approval, and once you click Approve/OK, it will be connect.
- That’s it!  Now every time you tweet something (from wherever), your tweet will be posted on Google Buzz!

While you’re at it, if you’re using Google Reader or any of the other services listed in Google Buzz, Add them as well!  I’ve found that Buzz is best when it is just connected to what I’m already doing and pulls in auto-posts from various places.  That makes it VERY low maintenance!

What do you think?  Have you used Tweetdeck before, or did you follow these instructions to start using it?  I’d love to hear your experiences with setting any of this up, and even what questions you have that I may be able to help with!  Leave a question/comment below!

Without getting into a detailed history of social media and the Internet, I’d like to answer some of the questions I get on a regular basis from very non-techy people.  The main question being:

I don’t understand why there are so many networking sites, especially (gasp!) Twitter?  I just don’t get it, so I’m not going to use it.

(Twitter getting the most slack as a LOT of people are still avoiding like the plague.)

In order to answer why there have been so many, I’ve found that it’s easiest to explain the progression from a pop culture prospective (the most popular ones used by the most non-techy audience).  In essence, it’s a return to the original, non-complicated way of posting statuses and messages to people in our different social groups.

In the beginning…

I always like to pull out the old Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that popped up right after the Internet launched, because it seems to have weird relevance on all this today.  All a Bulletin Board System was back in the late 80’s was a pure text page that you could log in, enter a particular topic area or “room”, and have real-time scrolling chat with the others there.  This photo is of a french BBS that gave you the time in different parts of the room, and if you typed in the command “Who”, would show you the list of users in the room and how long they’ve been online.

I bring that up because it seems like we’re constantly trying to get back to that real-time status and chat environment.  Sure, we’ve had chat rooms, then instant messengers, and now social media sites, but along the way, it seems that people got distracted on what they were really after.  Once the internet browsers were created, and websites along with it, people wanted to have a constant presence online, so they created and publicizes their websites and email addresses.

Websites were still so technical though, that they were primarily used for business.  Individuals that had websites were rare, except for those that were technical enough to figure it out and had money enough to pay to have it constantly up.  I’m personally not sure which consumer-site enabled it first, because I’m sure there were many that started around the same time, but these sites started making it easier for individuals to setup websites from a free or low-cost source, like AOL, Geo-cities, etc. that gave you a space and help wizards to setup your own profile.  You still had to know how to setup a website though, but at least by this time, you started having friends that had done it or some people in your family or work network that could advise you.

About this time, a site called SixDegrees.com started to allow you to connect with friends, however it was WAY before the Internet had enough users to make it really stick.  In the US, Friendster was personally the first one to really catch the pop culture wave, with it’s ability to sign up, fill out text info about yourself, add some pictures, then start connecting with your friends around the world.

Friendster – finally a networking site with popularity enough to attract a useful size!

Friendster was great at its time, and really started to give people the ability to both setup a constantly-online profile as well as message and email with their friends.  This was successful because you didn’t have to know anything about websites at all, you just filled out your profile info, uploaded pictures and off you went!  You could connect to friends, add them to your network, and see who you knew in common.

However, the downfall of the site began when people started using it heavily, and realized how clunky it was.  People dealt with the poor user experience while there was little or no popular alternative…

MySpace – better functionality and usability than Friendster, with customizable profiles!!

This opened the door for MySpace.  MySpace was exponentially more popular than Friendster, and started providing additional features and ways to connect with people, including:

• “bulletins” where you can see what others are posting publicly
• a “wall” on your profile so others can post comments to you,
• and the most interesting feature which was the ability to update your profile look-and-feel to keep the same widgets but completely customize what your page looks like, giving it your own personality, which you can change on a regular basis (and lots of people did).

However, what I saw next was an interesting progression, and perhaps a redefining of what people wanted to do withtheir online profile and networking.  Being able to customize your profile was great and all, but again it started to get too technically difficult to “keep up with the Joneses”.  I especially found it tempting and ridden with jealousy whenever I looked at a friend’s profile that had just put a “flashy”, new template on it (pun intended), and then looked at mine to see how boring mine was in comparison.  I started to spend hours researching, setting up, tweaking and re-doing my site almost every month.  I’m not saying everyone was like that, but people in general were spending more and more time updating their profile if they knew how, or trying to ignore it if they didn’t.

Facebook – forget difficult, customizable profiles, just give me status streaming!

During this same time, Facebook came along, bringing all the cool features like a “wall” and comments and pictures, and a new feature of “status” streaming, which everyone now knows is all the rage.  However, one BIG advantage Facebook has over MySpace, is it re-leveled the playing field by restricting the ability to update your profile back to just photos and info.  No hours worrying about what your profile looks like or how it works, no buying websites or MySpace for Dummies to look as cool as your friends.  Now my 82 year old grandma can have a Facebook page (and she does!) and it can look just as cool as mine if she fills everything out and loads pics!

Thus the exodus from MySpace began, and Facebook began to reign supreme because the lack of maintenance required (other than finding a hot default pic) , leaving you free to focus on what you want anyway, which is to connect with friends, post photos, comment on each other’s profiles, and update your status so everyone can know what you’re up to.

Twitter – forget everything EXCEPT for status streaming!!

Following the downward trend of complexity from Myspace to Facebook, along came Twitter.  This essentially stripped EVERYTHING out about your profile, except for some very basic info, and focused solely on status updates.  In fact, Twitter is so stripped down, that the whole point of their service is not only provide a website to update your status and check out others’, but build it as a platform where it can be integrated with other profiles, blogs, sites, apps, anywhere you want your status info.

Even though most people I’m writing this for are still stuck in Facebook land, the whole benefit of Twitter is that inter-connection of status updates.  For those of you that love to stream your whole life, that’s all Twitter focuses on is providing a platform to do that.  There are even free apps that you can download off the Internet (like Tweetdeck), which provides you one place to update your status and read others’, and it will post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (a professional networking site), and MySpace currently.  My next post will be discussing some of these tools at a basic level.

Today, these downloadable tools are fairly easy to use, and make updating multiple sites a snap, but there are still several to choose from, each with pros and cons.  I’ll go over these next time…

This is what I saw leading the progression from one social networking site to the next, and there are people still left in the old systems some abandoned along the way.

What were your reasons for moving/not moving onto the new sites/tools?

Social Networking History - http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

BBS Picture - http://www.marcelgagne.com/cwl062005.html

As with the other Gadgets and Lifestyles posts, I like to share how I’m using technology in hopes that other people can understand them easier, and to hear from others more tech-advanced than me on how to get more out of them.

For the longest time, I resisted using RSS feeds.  I didn’t understand them, it seemed annoying everyone trying to get me to “subscribe”, and I just never felt like there was anything with it that would be useful to me.  I didn’t even get the name: RSS.  It means “Really Simple Syndication”, but what does that mean to me?

Then, as I got more into the different Google tools, I saw the Google Reader (Google’s tool they’ve created to assist you in reading different RSS feeds).  So I said, OK, I’ll subscribe to one feed and see how it looks and if it’s something I could use.  I went to one of the blogs that I liked to read, looked for the RSS symbol and clicked on it, then chose Google Reader as the subscribing tool.  (Try it here on my blog with the RSS symbol on the top right of this page!)

Once I subscribed to the post, I went to Google Reader (www.google.com/reader), and I was able to look through the blog post titles and tell really quickly whether I wanted to read them or not.  I added a couple more blogs that I was interested in, including my own blog, and started to have a list of blogs that I was usually interested in what they posted.  In the mornings, I started looking at Google Reader on my iPhone on the bus on the way to work, and it suddenly hit me.  This is the same thing I do with MSBNC mobile, Crain’s mobile and other news sites!

I realized that what I had created was a news site that had sections (blogs) of all my favorite topics, and each morning I can skim the headlines to see which articles I want to read!  No more having to go to several different places to read the morning news, when I could just use Google Reader and get it all in one place!  One additional trick is that most news sites are starting to have RSS feeds of their news articles as well, so you can have your blog posts, press news and anything really, since there are starting to be as many blogs as there are websites nowdays.

There are many different RSS Readers out there, Google Reader is only one of them.  However, from the several that I’ve reviewed personally, Google Reader was the easiest and most consistent when switching from iPhone to desktop and back.  Some additional features available with Google Reader include Sharing, Starring, and several other share functions I haven’t used yet.

“Sharing” posts in Google Reader make the articles available in a list that others can see if they’re “following” your Reader account.

“Starring” posts in Google Reader makes them available in a special STARRED list you can access in one list (in case you want to come back to it later) without having to go to the individual source and try to find the special post again.

There are social networking features in Google Reader as well, just like other networking sites like Facebook, etc.  You can search for your friends by email, etc.  You can then see your friends’ shared posts under the “People you follow” section.

Google is constantly updating their sharing functionality, especially with social networking like Twitter and Facebook.  With the existing functionality pretty cumbersome to use, I’m definitely looking forward to some easier options.  Fortunately, emailing the post is very simple, but as we know, that’s not really “sharing” in the social sense we’re used to today.

Are you using RSS readers?  Which one do you think is the best?  Does it have great social networking sharing features?

Go try Google Reader at www.google.com/reader

My friend G and I have talked about this before, but never have really gotten it off the ground and had people share, so here we go…

Since iPhones are so customized and usually very personal, especially in my case since it’s my “other relationship”, let’s answer the question:

What’s on YOUR iPhone?

The top row contains my most frequently used apps:
- Mail and Calendar - for personal and work (Exchange) syncing.
- The Weather Channel - in the mornings.
- Buster - the killer app for the Chicago Transit Authority Bus GPS statuses.

The second row contains apps that I need in a hurry!:
- GoogleMaps - for obvious reasons, especially traffic updates while driving/riding somewhere! Very accurate!
- FourSquare - to throw a quick shout-out to wherever I am and great things about the place.
- Apartments.com – GPS while riding around to check out neighborhoods and find apt listings/prices, etc.
- Camera - for those award-winning one-of-a-kind moments..

The third row contains my “Staying Connected” apps:
- TweetDeck - even though it still has some flaws, it’s still the best Twitter app around IMHO.
- Facebook - obvious – the real-time, online Days of Our Lives… you can’t write stuff this good!
- MSNBC (msnbc.msn.com) - mobile site with quick headlines, loads fast, REALLY easy interface.
- MacRumors (mobile.macrumors.com)- mobile site, to satiate my relentless cravings for all things Apple.

The fourth row are my fave utility apps:
- Loopt (more fun with friends, but wish it was part of Facebook, not just able to update Facebook)
- Shazam and Pandora are a match made in Heaven!  Shazam will listen to and tag a song you’re hearing, then launch Pandora, enter the song or album or artist name, and voila! A whole radio station of the music you love!

My favorite story about these two is that I’ve always loved spanish guitar music, but could never find an album I liked.  I was sitting at brunch and heard a song that was a perfect example of it, launched Shazam and tagged the song (it listens for about 10-20 seconds and if it recognizes it, will tell you artist, album, song name, and as many social media links to their music).  I then launched Pandora and entered the song name, and it’s now one of my favorite online radio stations to listen to!   Harmonious perfection!

- And finally, G-Reader – mobile site that’s new for me, haven’t found a really good RSS reader on the iPhone yet that’s better.  Would love to find one..  This one is definitely lacking…

So now I pose the question to you… What’s on YOUR iPhone??

Greetings, everyone!  Lately, I’ve heard “My relative just added me on Facebook and REALLY does not need to see those pics or status updates from last weekend…” or “My work friends don’t know a lot about me and I’d like to keep it that way, but I want to network them on Facebook…”, etc.

I’ve been using the limited profile functionality in Facebook for a while now, but just like everything else about Facebook, I understand it’s tricky to find and use.  I know it’s been blogged about before, but most that I found seemed to over-complicate the process, so here’s my quick and dirty explanation…

Step 1 of 4) CREATE A FACEBOOK FRIENDS LIST AND ADD EXISTING FRIENDS TO THE LIST

Click “Friends” on the top menu.

Click “Create New List “

Give the list a name (in the screenshot, it’s named “Example Group”)

Click the people or type their name in to search for them

To see all the people you’ve added to the list, click “Selected” (next to “All”).

Click “Create List” when complete.

Step 2 of 4) CONFIGURE THE SECURITY SETTINGS FOR YOUR NEW FRIENDS LIST

Click “Settings” on the top right of the top menu (next to your name).

Click “Profile”.

For each section of your profile, click on the drop down and select “Customize…”
(Each drop down should at least be changed to Only Friends.)
(To restrict one or more Friends or Friends Lists from a section, you have to click “Customize…”)

Once you’ve clicked “Customize…”, the settings pop-up for that section only will appear.

Click “Only Friends”.

If you want to make sure one or more of your Networks can see the section, select them as well.

To restrict a Friends List or individual Friend(s) from this section, start typing their name in the field at the bottom of the pop-up until who you want appears.

Click on the list or name you want to add it to the list, then click “Okay” when complete.

Repeat these steps for each section listed on the page.

Step 3 of 4) CLICK SAVE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE WHEN YOU’RE DONE UPDATING EACH SECTION!
This is VERY IMPORTANT!  Your settings will be lost if you don’t click SAVE.

Step 4 of 4) CHOOSING A FRIENDS LIST WHEN ACCEPTING A FRIEND REQUEST

At the bottom of the Friend Request, there is a line to “Add to Friends List” where you can select which list to add them to.

Once you’ve selected a Friends List (if they need to be in one), then click Accept.

To see your existing Friends Lists, edit them or delete the list, click Friends on the top menu and they’ll be listed on the left.

If you look at any friends on the Friends page, you have the ability to search for them and “Add to List” is on the right of their search result line.

That’s it!  Happy Facebooking!