Diffusing is Confusing But Necessary
Struck by something in Dave Winer’s post today, near the bottom:
…but I’m hoping we escape the grips of centralized thinking and remember that what made blogs work was that everyone gets their own platform to speak their mind. TechMeme takes us back to the place that didn’t work, where everyone fights for scarce attention.
Our websites are a point in space, and a moment in time, but they are not the end-all of our online presence any longer. To be engaged, fully, on the web, is to build your passports, configure your listening tools, and launch off to all the various places that hold pertinent conversations and information at hand.
Is search the most important tool, or just the most used? How’s listening starting to rank for you? Because to me, listening is a big part of the game.
Starting Points for Online Presence
Getting started in social media might feel daunting. In considering what would constitute a “passport” for a would-be “web native,” I found myself adding more and more services to the list of things one might consider adding to their collection of applications and services to use.
Start at your own pace, and go as slowly as you need to for you to feel comfortable getting to understand all these services, but here is a list of applications and networks that I think you might consider joining and developing into your online reputation and presence platform:
The Basics
- Take a reasonably decent photo of yourself for an avatar pic. Size it to 100×100 pixels if you can. (most services want this as a default). If you’re shy off the bat, put something more fun than your corporate logo.
- Twitter - Be sure to add your nifty new photo. Then, if you don’t already have friends on Twitter, check the public timeline to see who’s doing something interesting, or check out Twitter Packs for some starting people to follow.
- WordPress.com Account - Even if you eventually choose another blogging platform, building a WordPress.com presence means that you get an OpenID account, a place to build a profile for lots of the popular blogging platforms (I recommend getting a Blogger/Google account for that reason, too), and also a potential “scratch blog” for putting up ideas that might not fit your larger presence.
- Facebook profile - There are millions of people using Facebook (and even more on MySpace). It’s a good place to build an account that tells people more about yourself, and as an outpost for your blog (add your RSS feed to Facebook through one of many 3rd party apps that will re-post it there), which all goes towards establishing your reputation online.
- YouTube account - YouTube serves millions of videos a month. It’s a great place to comment, to submit your own stuff to a larger audience, and/or to find points of interest. If you want more serious, better considered video hosting, try Blip.TV.
- Gmail account - which will give you access to Gmail.com, but also Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and plenty other useful services. I use Google Reader as my preferred news reader, and I use Google Calendar for ease of use of scheduling.
- **UPDATE** Google Reader for listening. Recommended by David Usher
Bonus Round
If you’re feeling like you want to participate even more, you’ll need these:
- **UPDATE** FriendFeed is a way to aggregate your presence and that of your friends online. Suggested by Ontario Emperor
- Digg and StumbleUpon and del.icio.us accounts - Use social bookmarking communities to share things you like, to find things you’re interested in, and to grow a social view of news and information.
- Upcoming.org for events to attend in this space.
- Flickr account - (which is technically now a Yahoo! account, as is del.icio.us.) This is for photo sharing, and gives you an easy place to put your pictures on the web.
- Skitch account - for screen captures, should you want to post a picture off your computer screen simply.
- PayPal account - for easy financial transactions used by many websites.
- **UPDATE** Plaxo for contact management. - Recommended by Susan Beebe.
Your Thoughts
There are certainly dozens more applications to consider, and this doesn’t count one’s primary blog, podcast, video property or otherwise. But I’m wondering if I’ve missed any “fundamental” sites that you’d recommend we add to this list, or if there are any that should come off. What’s your take?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Photo credit, hji
Alert Thingy Helps Make FriendFeed Indispensible
I have a blog, a Twitter account, a Flickr account, Facebook, and lots of other points of presence on the web. FriendFeed is one application that lets people see all your various output in one place. Now, with the new application, Alert Thingy, I can see your FriendFeed presence in a nifty little Adobe AIR application.
FriendFeed/AlertThingy makes seeing the larger media output of your friends easier. Does this help you in a given day? Hard to say. But because some of the comments of the web are shifting into FriendFeed and because the audience is becoming more and more atomized, tools like these are becoming important to seeing the larger story.
Presence apps are here. Aggregation apps are here. But when do we get triage and filtering? Attention is scarce, and we’re sacrificing more of it every day. Tools like Alert Thingy are half the solution by putting everything in one place. But who will help us human-filter our sources?
Found via TechCrunch.
Screen caps done with Plasq’s Skitch
What do Avatars Mean to Us
Our blogs, Twitter, Flickr, and all these places where we leave a bit of our social identity behind all offer yet another chance to upload a picture to represent us in this space. It’s the classic game Monopoly played out over and over and over. You want to be the thimble? No, I’m the car. Who gets the top hat? Only now, we can use pictures of ourselves. And this is revealing.
Changing our computers, our desktops, our online spaces is important to us. Customization and personalization are important. And as part of this, our icon, our avatar, our little square to show who we are matters too.
Some people use graphics. Others use symbols that represent something important to them. Some use pictures of themselves, and change them out frequently. Others have used the same picture everywhere for years.
And here’s a really interesting detail that came out in the conversations: what we choose as an avatar seems to relate to our self-image, our self-esteem, and what we think about when we look in the mirror.
I asked a few questions on Twitter about it, and got some interesting responses. I want to keep asking the question here:
What does your avatar mean to you? Do you change it often (on whatever services require one)? Do you use a picture of yourself or something else? Talk about avatars and what they mean to you in the comments, if you will. Talk about your online identity and how icons and avatars play into it.
Curious to hear your thoughts.
