Socially network with me!
We should probably all do this every once in a while, just as a way of expanding our connections a bit.
Here are the social networks that I'm reasonably active on:
As far as IM is concerned, the only one I am on with any frequency is Meebo, for which you can use the widget on the sidebar.
I'm on LinkedIn, Nature Network and Connotea, but not particularly active. I don't currently have any other active blogs.
So, friend, follow or subscribe to me and let's connect online. In particular, if you haven't joined my favourite of the bunch, Friendfeed, I would encourage you to give it a try. There are active and vibrant library, science and technology communities there, all of which I have lots of connections to. It would be quite easy to start with friending me and branch out into those areas and explore. Friendfeed is by far the best source for conversation online, vastly superior to Twitter. FF is talking with a group of friends at a bar or restaurant, Twitter is shouting at each other from across a crowded concert hall.
(Yeah, I know I should have a text box on the sidebar with all this info. I'll get that up and running fairly soon now that this post is done.)
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8 comments:
Hi John,
I like your analogies for Friendfeed and Twitter.
I keep meaning to try using FF - my only holdout at the moment is that not many of my friends are using this network so I would also have to convince them in order to make it worthwhile - for now you'll just have to keep following me on Twitter :-)
Sarah (4Bes)
Hi Sarah,
For FF you don't actually need to connect with people you know in the real world. The great thing is that you can easily set up new relationships by linking from people you follow at the beginning. Following me, for example, gets you to a whole lot more librarians and each of them will get you to even more.
Give it a try.
That's true - it's always nice to make new friends in the library community - getting some friends on FF is now officially on my list of things to do.
FOAF would be another way to store this, John. Machine readablity FTW!
Huh, I'd never heard of Friendfinder before, but it looks pretty brilliant. I'm officially signed up.
Yes, it's brilliant!
I really don't mean to be such a party pooper or wet blanket or killjoy...
But if I may comment, I found FriendFeed to be kind of overwhelming. I felt overloaded with information. Certainly, I was interested in many - in fact most - of the items in the feeds I saw.
But there were just so many that I would never have to time to look at them all. It was a bit frustrating.
I'm certain there's a function to limit feeds, but at the same time I wouldn't want to exclude potential items of interest.
I sometimes feel like I'm from another planet, one where information comes at you gently and in more manageable portions - smaller satisfying morsels, one at a time, rather than an enormous buffet all at once.
Is there something wrong with me?
Any tips?
Thanks.
Hi brenda_d,
FF can be overwhelming and it's certainly not for everyone.
There are a couple of strategies to help. First of all, you can just start by subscribing to only a few people and that should slow the torrent of stuff. Especially avoid the super high volume people like Scoble if you want things a little slower.
The other thing you can do is block entire classes of posts -- like people's Twitter posts, or del.icio.us bookmarks or Amazon wish lists, all that kind of extraneous stuff that clogs your feed. Blocking Twitter is probably the best place to start.
Some people also block Friend-of-a-Friend items, although for me those are great ways of expanding your network.
Anyways, give it another try. It really took me a couple of days to get used to. Also, the more you contribute, the more fun and useful it will be, so comment away.
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