If you have joined us over the last seven weeks you have been taken on a Social Media & Networking journey – learning some of the basics.

• Week 1 – BLOGS - Intro, how they are used,  write your fist post, best uses of a blog, next steps
• Week 2 – RSS – Intro, using RSS, RSS at work, other uses
• Week 3 – Forums – What is it?
• Week 4 – Wikis – Intro, how they are used, privacy & adoption, overcoming bad stigmas,
• Week 5 – Facebook / LinkedIn - Intro, strategy, friending & connecting, updates & groups, why you should be using them at work
• Week 6 – Twitter / Yammer – Intro, following & tweeting, twitter language, professional uses, Yammer – sign up, a little Twitter fun
• Week 7 – Social Bookmarking

TO DO – FINAL POST

What have you learned?  What has been of the most value?  What benefits have you seen of these technologies?  Have you changed any habits to incorporate them?  I would love to hear from you.

Please write a blog post of your experience and add the link to the comments of this post so we can all learn from you.

If you work as NASA MSFC and would like to be in the drawing for a lunch with Center Director Robert Lightfoot, you must write a blog post and add the link to your post in the comments of this post by the end of the year, December 31st.  Winners will be announced the first week of January.

Did you miss a week or two?  These will always be available, so feel free to come back when you have the time.

Thanks for taking the Challenge!

This has been great exercise for me personally. A lot of people have given their input, which has shaped these posts.  Thanks to all for your excellent feedback.

(And now, back to the regularly scheduled program…)

Let’s look at the SOCIAL part of social bookmarking.

First – a humorous story.  I was presenting at a conference and my handout was a one pager with only my social bookmarking address.  It just so happens that I often use the name of ‘Frank Ferter’ in many examples and sites.  It wan’t until then that someone pointed out how funny it looked: http://delicious.com/frankferter

If you go to my bookmarks, you will find everything that I have added (except for the ones I have made private).

By looking at my bookmarks, you will be able to tell what my interests are.  Why is that significant?  Because if we are interested in the same things, it might be a good idea to continue to explore what I have because you will most likely find something useful for yourself.

Example.  If I was a web designer and interested in color schemes I would do a search for that on Delicious and find that one of the links a lot of people have bookmarked was “COLOURlovers.”

Over on the right I would also notice that there were over 38,ooo people who have bookmarked this site.  ”Hmmmmm,” methinks.  ”Maybe that is a good resource for me to check out if 38,000+ people have bookmarked it.”

After I click on the link and find that, yes, it is very valuable, I bookmark it myself.  Then, methinks again, “I wonder what other bookmarks these 38,000 people know that I don’t know about.”   I click on the number to see who has bookmarked it.

I find a chronological list of those people who have bookmarked it and with which tags they have used.  This gives me two resources: 1) a list of similar people and 2) a list of tags which might open my learning exponentially.

This gives me a list of both people and the tags with which they bookmarked this site.  When I see someone that has tagged it with ‘color’ and ‘webdesign’  - I can bet they will have other bookmarks I will be interested in.

From there, your discovery of information, your learning becomes unlimited and takes off.

There are other solutions and variants of this, but to keep it simple, this is as far as I will go.

TO DO – Use it.  (Difficulty Level: EASY )

• Set up Delicious on each computer you own.
• Start using it for all of your bookmarking needs
• Start using it for your

(This is the final week of the Social Media Challenge)

We all have bookmarks in our browser.  Folders with bunches of bookmarks to help us get to sites we don’t want to forget about or those we go to often.

But there are a few limitations:

• Bookmarks do not cross computers – In other words, the bookmarks you have at work are not available at home, and via versa.  If you find a great site at home that you will want to use at work you might have to email yourself to bookmark it there.  PAIN.
• Bookmarks are hierarchical – If you were to bookmark Engaged Learning, which bookmark file would you put it in?  ”Learning” or “E2.0″ or “Social media” or “Blogs” or …  What if it could fit in all of those?  How will you remember where you put it if the bookmarks grow in number?
• Bookmark horder!  If you find a great web page, how will you share it?  Email it to everyone?  Tweet it (good idea). But if it isn’t easy, you probably won’t share the link with anyone else.  In fact, I bet a large majority of the most useful websites you have not shared with everyone.  What if we could share those?  How much could we learn from each other?!

Enter Social Bookmarking.

Like other times, I am going to let our friends at Common Craft explain this.

This is SIMPLE. This is SHARING.  This is LEARNING & DISCOVERY.  This is a TIME SAVER.

With Social Bookmarking you have overcome all the difficulties presented above.  1) You can access your bookmarks from ANY computer – yours or anothers’- as long as you sign in; 2) the Tags allow you to efficiently organize your bookmarks without losing them; 3) Others can see your bookmarks (you can, if needed, make some bookmarks private so only you can see them).

TO DO – Sign up (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 5- minutes)

• Go to Delicious.com and sign up.
• Add the TAG & DELICIOUS buttons to your tool bar (or use Ctrl+D to bookmark).
• Start bookmarking with DELICIOUS.

Now, what you have all been waiting for…  A little Twitter fun.

Follow the llama

#f2f or #funtofollow

• @fakestevenwright – one of my favorite comedians.
• @dowhatItellyou – just do that the llama tells you.  Good.
• @awkwardfamily – Awkward family photos – the name says it all.
• There are a TON more.  Unfortunately, many can be pretty course or raw (read: inappropriate).  My philosophy: there are so many great accounts out there, why follow these others?

#onlineapps

There are THOUSANDS of applications which pull information from and use the services of Twitter.  For a HUGE list, see oneforty.

• Nearby Tweets – Find tweeple nearby.
• Trends Map – What are they Tweeting about in your area?
• Twittercal – Connect Twitter to your Google Calendar.
• Twitpay – Pay someone through Twitter.
• Mr. Tweet - Recommends people for you to follow according to your tweets and the people you currently follow.

#failwhale

The famed “Fail Whale” is what you might see when Twitter is down.  (This used to happen frequently.  Thankfully, we don’t see him very often now.)

#twittermovies

#shamelessplug

There is another Twitter app – one that I cannot mention yet – which I am working on.  It is one of those brilliant ideas that has been KILLING me for a year now that it has not been created and I AM SO CLOSE!

But, we have run into a little snag. We built it and then realized that we need to switch technologies to Ruby/Rails/Javascript.  So if you or another person you know with these mad web dev skills are interested, let me know.  I want to get this up and running – yesterday.

Just a little reminder – if you are a part of NASA, go sign up for Yammer.

Get the desktop app.  Or the Firefox addon YammerFox.

If you are a part of ANY organization, see if there is an active Yammer group.  If not, start one!

That’s all I’m say’n.

Yesterday I mentioned that “What are you doing” or “What’s happening” are bad questions to answer.  These are the questions at the top of the ‘tweet box’ in Twitter, Yammer or others which are to help you come up with information to tweet about.  Rather, you might want to answer these questions:

• What have you seen something online that would be interesting to your followers? Tweet the link.
• Have you had an AH-HA moment?  What was it?
• Have you seen the ordinary in a different light?
• Did you take a picture or video you would like to share?
• Did someone else say something you thought was particularly interesting?

That should get you started.  As you can tell, it is all about sharing useful information.

TWICTIONARY

But, Twitter today is not what it was when it started.  In fact it was very different in the way it is being used.  And guess what?  Twitter had nothing to do with it!  It was the users that morphed Twitter (unlike MS Word morphing you).  They started using it in ways Twitter did not think of, and it grew.  In fact, its use could almost have a dictionary dedicated to it.  Here are a few:

• RT = Retweet.  When you see another’s tweet you want to pass on, you retweet it.  Example: “RT @ThisIsSethsBlog Seth’s Blog: What Matters Now: get the free ebook http://bit.ly/5Ta1lE”
• @ = Mention.  When I want to get your attention or attribute something to a specific person, I will use “@yourtwittername”.  For example, @kevindjones will let me know that either the tweet is for or about me in some way.
• DM = Direct Message.  Yes, you can privately message one person only.  This is a break from the traditional twitter model.  To do this start your tweet with “d twittername’, replacing ‘twittername’ with the person you want to message.  For example, someone would DM me like this, ” d kevindjones Shhhhh.  Don’t tell anyone.”  The catch?  They have to be following you to DM them.
• # = Hashtag.  Signifies a topic.  First used with the 2007 San Diego fires: “#sandiegofire 300,000 people evacuated in San Diego county now”.  Here is an example of one I just found, “Let people know you are attending the #SMWF ‘Social Media World Forum’ add up an event badge: http://tinyurl.com/yap3443 & let us know!” The topics don’t even need to be real.  Another example tweet from @ITSinsider: “I need to run out for a number of errands.  Including a visit to the oral surgeon #joytotheworld”  Here are some more hashtag tips.
• Twitterverse = The whole of Twitter users.
• Tweeps or Tweeples = people who use Twitter.
• Tweeter (1) = a person using Twitter
• Tweeter (2) = How Twitter is pronounced in the South.

URL SHORTENERS

A URL is a web address, like http://google.com.  When you want to tweet a web address, sometimes they can be sooooo long that they either take up your whole tweet or don’t fit in 140 characters.  There are many services that shorten these URLs.  The most popular are http://tinyurl.com & http://bit.ly and the newest is Google’s.  They are simple to use and VERY handy.

WHEN TWEETING…

Use common sense.  Remember that your audience is everyone and they all could be listening – including your family, your employer, your future employer, your future spouse…

Some people have forgotten this and have not fared so well.

TO DO – Start Tweeting!  (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: As needed)

• Add your twitter name (@kevindjones, for example) to the comments below so we know who we can follow.
• If you haven’t already, load up a desktop application for tweeting.
• Start tweeting.
• Look at others’ tweets to see how and why they tweet.

TOMORROW: How to use Twitter/Yammer at work.

Now that you are signed up, let’s figure out how to use this.  Let’s talk about value, following and how to tweet.

VALUE

One of the first things you might notice as you log on to your home page is that it displays the number of people you follow and the number of followers you have.

First and foremost you must understand this principle: The value of Twitter comes in the number and quality of people you follow, not in the number who follow you. Why? In the end, Twitter is about learning.  And here is my theory:

The opening question, “What’s Happening?” or “What are you doing” make very shallow conversations – on or off line.  But if I were to share with you some bit of interesting information – that’s were things could get interesting and a real conversation can take place.  But for that to happen, the information I share should be something you are interested in.  If I tweet, “interesting diagram on intentionality & formality in learning http://is.gd/5n2ar via @csessums” as did @hjarche yesterday, and I was interested in the learning profession, that would be something I would want to check out. (As you can see, it is who you follow that gives you the most value.)

So, Twitter is turning into a medium allowing professionals or other like minded individuals on a topic to share useful information.  This is why the highest demographic of users is between 18-35 (47% of users).  1) They are starting their professions and have a lot to share and 2) they latch on to technological solutions faster than those who are older.  BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  The second largest demographic is between 35-49 (31%) and then the next is 50+ (21%)!  And of all Twitter users, 63% have a college degree.  Where are the teens?  They are last at 1% – why?  Texting 1:1 is most important to them.  As they enter the workforce, connections and communicating, 1:many becomes much more important.  So I am not surprised with the change in stats.  Teens are not joining yet only because they don’t ‘get it’ and they don’t need it.

That’s my theory, anyway.

FOLLOWING

Remember – value comes in who you follow.  Go to my Twitter home page (make sure you are logged in).  If what you read you find interesting, follow me.  If not, skip me.

To find others you might want to follow, go to Twitter’s search engine and search a keyword.  “Learing” or “e.20″ or “Social media” or “NASA” or whatever you are interested in.  Find out who is saying what about these topics.

Then click on the name of a person you think you might want to follow.  On their Twitter home page (make sure you are already logged in) click on the FOLLOW button under their picture.  Now, on the right are pictures of people they follow.  Go exploring.  Click on someone. See if they are worth following, if so, do so.

As we go on, you will get the hang of who to follow.

HOW TO TWEET

True, you can tweet from the Twitter page.  But oddly enough, most people don’t.  Why? To read your friend’s tweets or to tweet yourself, you have to open a browser, go to the page and do it there.  It may seem like a no brainer, but it is actually a pain.

Instead, you can download a small program that will keep Twitter open all the time (Tweetie for my Mac is my favorite).  This makes a BIG difference in how and why and when you would use it.  When you do have time, you can look at it or you can quickly tweet.  Another option is to put it on your iPhone or Blackberry.

But, whatever you do, don’t rely on the Twitter home page.  Just don’t do it.

TO DO – Set Yourself Up!  (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: ???? Depends on you)

Do all the actions I mention above.

• Find followers
• Download a twitter app to your desktop and phone (if you can).

Tomorrow we will talk about Tweeting and sharing and what @ & # & DM & RT mean, and why they are important.

Week 7: Twitter & Yammer: Day 1

There is SO MUCH to talk about Twitter that it is hard to choose and condense into five posts.  So, stay with me on this one…

First: TWITTER

Imagine this scenario: You go to a Christmas party at a friend’s home.  When you enter you see many groups of people standing in circles talking to each other.  You enjoy mingling so you join one group standing by the fireplace. Its the guys talking about the fishing trip one of them took.  You are there for a few minutes, but are hungry.  So you leave to grab some munchies.  There are a group of ladies talking about the latest Twilight movie.  You have not seen it yet, so you listen.  Soon you make your way over to another group sitting in the living room.  They are talking about monkeys. It was disturbing, so you walked out on the porch by yourself.

Notice – there were a lot of conversations going on and you missed most of them.  And it was OK with you.  You didn’t ask for a transcript of each after the party.  What you missed you missed and you were fine with that.

Take that online and that is Twitter.  It is so simple that you might think, “There has to be more to it than that.” Well, OK, if you MUST know.

When you ‘talk’ on Twitter it is called a “tweet.”  These tweets can only be 140 characters long (including spaces and punctuation).  To receive someone’s tweets you need to ‘follow’ them (conversely, you can also unfollow them if you get tired of them).  They may tweet once a week, a day, an hour or several times in any given hour.

You will notice that Twitter asks,

That may be a good question to get you started, but that is not how it is best used.  There are other, much more interesting questions you could answer.  Tomorrow we will get into some of those questions.

Right now I follow 206 people.  That might seem overwhelming, but remember the party? I miss out on most of the conversation and I am OK with it.  I don’t feel the need to ready every tweet from everyone that I follow.  From the collective, 26,000 tweets were written in the last minute as I write this. (Check the up-to-minute count.)

YAMMER

Yammer pretty much the same as Twitter with a few exceptions.

1. It is organization specific. For example, there is a NASA Yammer group.  Only those with NASA addresses can join and only those who are joined in can see the conversations going back and forth – so in that respect it is private.
2. It is meant for short updates and responses, yet it can go over 140 characters.

Twitter and Yammer are surprising services.  Actually, they are not surprising themselves, but it becomes surprising in the way they are used and adopted.

Most people sign up, try it, don’t get it, and drop off.  But then they keep hearing about Twitter and think, “OK, I will give it another try.”  It isn’t until then that they really understand it and use it and love it.  It becomes one of those big AH-HA moments for them.  This is exactly what happened to me and what I want to help you avoid.  If I can guide you over the drop off stage I will be successful.

So, like I said in the beginning, stay with me on this one…

TO DO – Sign up (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 20- minutes total)

• Go to Twitter.com and sign up and fill out your profile information – don’t forget your avatar (picture)!
• If you are a NASA employee, go to Yammer.com and sign up using your NASA email.  There is a good group of people on Yammer already going.  If you are a part of another organization, try signing up to see if there is a group from your company on Yammer you didn’t know about.  Again, fill out your profile information.

Tomorrow we will talk about following others, how to find them, who you want to find, and other wondrous topics.

(Warning – this is a longer post – but it is worth it.  I promise.  It makes the case as to why we should use social networking sites not only inside of organizations, but also why we should not block employees from accessing outside sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.)

Before we get to the topic of using Facebook and LinkedIn at work, I want to tell a story which was prompted by the comment yesterday from @LisaMeece108.  Hopefully this will give you one example of the many benefits of these social networking sites.

When I first joined Facebook I also joined my high school’s graduating class Group that one of my old classmates created.  From that point on, I felt I was inundated with friend requests.  Some were old friends I had lost contact with and I was excited I knew where they were.  Others, to be honest, I barely remember or had not even thought about since the “good ol’ days.” If I accepted their friend requests, their updates started showing up in my “stream.”  I started learning a lot about people I really didn’t know any more and I was skeptical about the value of these updates.

Fast forward to my beautiful cousin’s wedding.  We were living in Portland at the time and she was living in the area of our home town, a couple hours south.  At her wedding there were a number of people she worked with who came that I had graduated with – AND, I was ‘friends’ with on Facebook.

One particular person was Janice.  In high school we didn’t hang out together.  We knew each other and would talk every now and then, but we didn’t know each other very well at all.  She was a great person, we just hung around in different social circles.

When we met again for the first time in 20 years, we started off as if we were great friends.  We immediately launched into our families and the activities we are in – all because we saw each others’ updates and had a background – in reality, we were just picking up where we left off on Facebook.  Our visit skipped past the awkward “Hi, remember me from 20 years ago?” stage where we would have even less to talk about than we did in high school.  Instead, it was a very pleasant experience.  For me, it was very eye opening as to the potential power of  social networking.

Now, on to FB/LinkedIn at work…

It is my plight, but one that I willingly accept.  Most of my professional career has been spent alone.  I was hired by companies to do something that no one else in the company could do.  It was me and me alone who performed these functions as I evangelicize (is that word?), educate, try to get others to help me and take up the cause for which I have been hired.  There were not any peers to work with and bounce ideas off of. My learning and growth was limited to my personal education.  Although I feel I was good at what I did and knew more about it than anyone in the company, it was as if they were held hostage by my limited knowledge and skills.  Honestly, I felt badly, but could only give them what I knew, products of learning and experience, knowing that if I only knew more I could take them further.  “If only I had a team” I would cry to myself, “then we could learn from one another, bounce ideas back and forth and go beyond my limited nature.”

For this reason I became very active in different local associations of similar people.  From them I was able to learn new techniques, perspectives and skills.  Yet, this was still very limiting.  At most we only met once a month for about an hour.

Then came online social networking…

No longer did I need to wait until our monthly meeting.  NAY! I could throw away the shackles of time and geographic location!  Now, if I need to ask a question, I can now do it immediately, when I am in the moment working on that specific task.

For example, I am joined to a great group of peers through social networking – the E2.0 Adoption Council. None of them work at NASA.  They all work at different companies, yet we all do the same thing – we help large organizations (10K people +) implement what is termed “Enterprise 2.0.”  We are connected by a social networking site and by Yammer (which we will talk about next week).  If I have a question, I can post it to one of these places and get several answers and join in on great dialogue.  Their perspectives are unique and invaluable. And when they ask questions, I am there to share my experiences and thoughts, helping them. We don’t share confidential or proprietary information – they are all professionals.  If this network were blocked it would be to the detriment of the organization I am working for.

Even if I did have a team*, just think: I could be connected to tens, hundreds, even thousands of ‘peers’ with an infinite amount of experience is a FREE benefit to me and the organization.  I would have to be CRAZY to not allow my team to tap these resources.  Then why do some organizations?

Fear.  Fear that it will be abused.  Fear that employees will 1) waste time and 2) post inappropriate or confidential information in an open space.

You only have to go as far as the back of the cover jacket of the book Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee, the originator of the term and a leading expert and researcher of organizational use of these tools.  It says that the book will “reveal where the real risks and roadblocks are with Enterprise 2.0, and why most concerns are unfounded.”  Inside the book he states, “I have noticed an interesting pattern: before an organization begins an  Enterprise 2.0 effort, its leaders typically have a consistent set of concerns about the negative things that could happen.  But most of these issues are not real or serious risks… After an organization begins to deploy (E2.0), its leaders’ concerns often shift to one simple issue: How can we go faster” (p.145)?  Later he writes how he tries to collect horror stories of these fears incarnate, but  “…my collection is almost empty. I have yet to come across any true horror stories – scenarios that make me question whether the risks associated with deploying (E2.0) actually do outweigh the benefits” (p.146).  (BTW – go buy the book. Now.)

Is your organization not networking from within?  Why not?  If it is not, it is limiting the ability for employees to be more effective through networking.

To be fair, Facebook is not an E2.0 application.  E2.0 refers to using these tools inside organizations.  Yet we have to ask: Have employees put out information on Facebook that they should not have? Yes.  Does it happen often.  No.  Does the risk outweigh the potential benefit? Not even close. What is the stepping stone?  Simply: TRUST.  If you have it, you are on your way.  If you don’t, you won’t see these tools any time soon.

I could never be as effective as I am without this E2.0 group.  Period and without question.  There are a ton of professional Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn which bring together people who do what you do, who support each other.  Join one or two or three or more. Do more than join – get engaged in them.

If you are blessed enough to work for an organization which does not block Facebook or LinkedIn, take advantage of it to connect to peers – learn from them, share with them and become a more valuable employee.

* In reality, I do have a great team. But this team is not dedicated to my field of work.  They have their own responsibilities and E2.0 is only a part of what they do.  They have not done this before, and so they are learning and doing at the same time – and doing very well, I might add!

STATUS UPDATES

A couple days ago I was in a meeting where a person said, ” I just don’t see the value of Facebook.  I mean, seriously.  I don’t care that someone ‘is waking up with a cup of coffee’ or is ‘slowly recovering from yesterday’s surgery.’  What a waste of time.”  He then grabbed someone’s iPhone with the Facebook app running and started reading off the updates.  I must admit, some of them did sound silly.  But let me give you a simple example of how something so mundane and initially inconsequential can help.

Photo by paulcole on Flickr

Every year our church likes to book a camping area for everyone to go camping together.  It just so happened that I was flying in that Friday night and was going to make it just in time to leave with the family.  But the last leg of my flight was delayed.  I called my wife and let her know, then I jumped on Facebook and updated my status: “Flight is delayed.  Can’t wait to see the fam after two weeks away and go camping. Hopefully I will be there in time to meet them.”

When my wife arrived at the campsite she suddenly had a number of people helping her out to set up the tent and get everything ready for her and the seven kids.  Why?  They saw the update, knew I would not be there with them and pitched in to help.  She kept hearing, “I heard Kevin will be late.” How was that, my non-Facebook using wife thought?  Did he call everyone?  No, it was the Facebook status.

The other day I found out that my friend’ wife was coming home from the hospital after delivering a baby.  Since we now live 2500 apart , I had not heard about the birth, and probably would not have until his wife was somewhat back to normal.  But I found out early, thankfully!

Then, last week, I had an business acquaintance message me through LinkedIn.  We have talked numerous times and had lunch together once.  He is a great guy and I have been impressed with his work.  Unfortunately, work is something he didn’t have any more and he let me know through LinkedIn.  Now, I can have my eyes open for him.

Can the updates be abused?  Sure, and some people are better at doing that than others.  But other times, those small, seemingly insignificant updates can make a big difference.

GROUPS

Facebook and LinkedIn both have GROUPS which you can join (without giving away private information about yourself).  Once in, there is usually a discussion on that topic.  The Groups can be organized around causes, ideas, conspiracy theories, music artists, professional initiatives or goofy topics.  Just about whatever you can think of, personal or professional, there will be a group for you to join.  Some groups are VERY useful – sharing information and asking/answering questions.  It becomes another set of people who have common passions to collaborate and connect with.

TO DO – Join some groups (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 15- minutes total)

• Go to both Facebook and LinkedIn and search groups for your favorite causes and professional interests.
• Join them and jump in on the conversations!