More on Friendsourcing

February 12, 2007 · Comments

Blue In this new social media space, it’s suddenly important to have friends you can tap to:

  • Spread the word (Digg, YouTube embeds, Flickr)
  • Contribute (podcasts, Flickr Groups, MySpace friends, comment systems)
  • Bounce Ideas Off (blog posts)
  • Proofread
  • Source Projects – like find good help
  • Recommend (personally, or through things like Yelp)
  • Check In (Twitter, blog comments)

Subject Matter Experts

If a teen needs advice, you can send people to HeyJosh. If you want financial advice, especially around student loans and scholarships, who else but the Financial Aid Podcast? Want parenting advice? Want a religious perspective? We have friends in new marketing, professional speaking, better pitches, and there are several more like it.

Tools for Voice

We know how to help with bringing a voice to your vision. Do you work for a small children’s center in Maine? We have suggestions on how to improve your fundraising. Do you want to grow your community around your word-of-mouth referral business efforts? We’ve got plenty of friends for that.

Strength in Your Network

Never before have you had the personal opportunity to reach out to so many people, share what you know, and have friends share their ideas and skills in return. You’ve got a great network here, stretching across great blogs, and into all other areas of the web. How could YOU contribute to this, and how can YOU use your superpowers to build someone else’s network? What do you bring to this particular group?

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  • Ultimately, we're reminded of Metcalf's Law, which says that the value of the network increases with its size. When 2 people have a fax machine, the utility of the fax is minimal. When 2 billion people have a fax machine, the utility of the fax is profound.

    Here's the next stage. Learn how to tie all your tools together, letting them act as filters for each other, letting data flow among them. Go into your MySQL control panel and "select distinct user_email from wp_comments" - then export all the commenters from your blog to LinkedIn. Those who accept your invitation (and it'll probably be most of them) should be filtered and imported into Twitter and StumbleUpon. Put all the tools together, and just as the power of your personal network is enhanced with more members, so each new media tool's power is enhanced when coupled with other tools.
  • interesting series chris, like steve says, for real.
  • You're hitting on something big here, Chris. The idea of an expansive yet personal network is something that things like RSS brings to us, as well as things like Twitter and Flickr. That sense that you're up to date with people is really important for that comfort factor with their recommendations. It's kind of the fabric tying all these tools together, imo.
  • Amy Bailey
    love the picture! How about a network of how to take the most unique pictures for blogging, that actually get the message across, a talent of yours!
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