Turning your online network into a face-to-face network

Josh Shear has a nice blog post about meeting people face-to-face that he's interacted with on Twitter. We tend to think that our online acquaintances and friends are only people that we see online, but often they become people that we interact with face-to-face at local events and conferences. They may become people that we do business with or that we collaborate with on projects.

Turning your online network into a face-to-face network happens with a little effort. You coordinate a local tweetup or host a tweetup as part of a conference. Mashable gives useful advice for tweetup do's and don't's. While you may think that just one tweetup is enough, I can tell you from experience that some people who want to attend won't be able to and that there will be others who will not have heard that it is happening. Therefore, do a series of them and encourage participants to spread the word about them.

You might also identify specific people that you would like to get to know better. Consider having breakfast, coffee or lunch with these people. Why breakfast, coffee or lunch? These are time-bounded commitments, so if the meeting doesn't go well, your commitment is only an hour max. If the meeting does go well and you'd like to interact with that person more, then you can set up a follow-up event. (Be sure to pick a neutral and safe place for your first meeting. Even though you have gotten to know this person online, it's always good to be a little cautious with your first f2f meeting.)

Of course, one of the best ways of meeting online buddies f2f is to realize that you are all going to the same event and can meet there. Because you're at an event, it means that you have someone in common that you can discuss, which may make that first f2f more comfortable. This happened to me at the Chris Hughes event where Josh Shear introduced me to Patrick Shaughnessy and others. I also got to meet Bradford Morse, who I traded tweets with during the event. And I connected with people who I knew but didn't realize that they had a Twitter account. We found each other through the events hashtag.

As Josh says:

For those of you who are worried that spending too much time on a network like Twitter is going to cut down on your face-to-face time with people, you need to re-think that....it's a pretty simple tool that costs exactly nothing to expand both your social and professional networks. Seriously.

Friends or friends or ?

This evening I sat on a panel with two others (Josh Shear and Gina Chen) to talk about web 2.0 at a meeting of the Professional Journalists and Communicators of Oswego County. While we mentioned blogs, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace and other tools, we spent most of the time talking about Twitter. One of the topics that came up in a number of different ways was how can you follow so many people? How can you have so many friends? Of course, we know that if you have 300+ people following you (like I do), you really don't know all of those people. Some are truly friends and colleagues, some are acquaintances, and most are people who find your perspective interesting. It is unfathomable to people who are not using the tools how it is possible to follow -- or be followed by -- that many people.

Josh Shear used an analogy that made a lot of sense to me. He pointed to the Oswego River, which was rushing by outside the restaurant's window. We can only see part of the river. We see what is in front of us and then only the surface of the water. The same with these social networking tools. We see moments in time. When I look at Twitter, I see what is happening now. I don't see to know what happened 15 minutes ago. It is best to be in the moment and only care about "the now."

Thanks to Shane Liebler for moderating tonight's event! We all enjoyed the conversation.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Evan Williams - Twitter founder -- talking about Twitter

Less than 10 minutes in length and worth watching. By the way, Twitter was a side project for his company (Odeo).

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Convincing management about...Twitter

I refer to Twitter as text messaging on steroids. It is called microblogging, where you can talk about your thoughts/activities in 140 characters bursts of information. It may seem frivolous, but Twitter is impacting how we exchange information, how we communicate news, and how we interact with businesses.

If you are trying to convince your management about the value of Twitter and need examples to use, try these...

Articles:

• When Calculating Twitter's ROI, Don't Forget Its Change on Organizations
• Twitter first to publish dramatic crash pictures
• The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit
• Industry advised to get behind Twitter phenomenon
• 4 points to consider when tackling Twitter
• Follow your cable company on Twitter
• Microblogging: Sweet to tweet

People/organizations that are twittering:

• Rick Sanchez and others at CNN
• New York Times
• Intuit
• Comcast
• Many libraries
• Resideo.com Hotels
• AccuWeather
• Countdown (MSNBC)
• U.S. Congress (Senate and House of Representatives)
• Various U.S. government elected officials
• Bloomberg

Of course, the best way to be convinced of Twitter's power is to try it yourself. So if you haven't tried it yet, come on - jump in! (The tweeting is fine!)

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Technorati tag: Twitter

CNN names Twitter one of the top tech trends of 2008

From CNN:



If you're not using Twitter (or another micro-blogging service), better ask yourself why.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

#hashtags in Twitter

You may have seen people used the # in front of a word in Twitter and wondered what it meant. Called hashtags, these are a way of indexing a conversation in Twitter, so it can become more visible. Hashtags have been used for conferences as well as newsmaking events. The concept was created by hashtags.org. Documentation for the feature is on their blog. To use hashtags, you should follow the twitter person hashtag, then hashtag will be able to find the tweets more effectively. To search hashtags, go to hashtags.org.

Hashtags tend to be very topical. For example, one of the important hashtags for today (Nov. 28, 2008) is #mumbai, which has been providing status and news of the critical situation there. Noting the importance of social media, one person twittered, "Just that social media reporting got us better, fast & accurate info than mainstream."

If you have not used hashtags, you should get familiar with them, so you can use them when necessary. Recognized them as a useful tool, but also recognize that they may not always help you communicate important information quickly. As I look at hashtags.org, I see that the feed is way behind perhaps due to the volume of hashtags being used, so the news it provides is not always up-to-the-minute.

Related post: Using hashtags in Twitter

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Article: How Twitter Can Help at Work

For those of you who are still learning how to use Twitter for work purposes, this article may help.

BTW I realize that I post frequently about Twitter. Why? What blogging was 4 - 5 years ago, microblogging (like Twitter) is today. It's hot!

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Participating in politics through online social tools

Are you participating in discussions about the U.S. presidential election? Have you been sharing information on the economic crisis? And are you doing that online?

During the political party conventions this summer, I sat watching the candidate speeches while typing away on my laptop in Twitter and FriendFeed. I found and shared information from other web sites, and checked out information that people posted to support their viewpoints. I wasn't just listening to the speeches, I was thinking about what they were saying and providing quick commentary...and reading the commentary of others. Comments that other made caused me to pay attention more to what the candidates said and did.

During the presidential debate last Friday, I purposefully fired up my laptop and got into Twitter in order to tweet while watching/listening. Twitter's topic feeds were able to keep up with the conversation, but tools like Twitterfox had a definite lag. CNN's forums -- setup specifically for people to comment on the debate -- also seemed to have problems handling all of the attention.

If you haven't jumped into the political conversations online, I would suggest using Twitter during the vice president debate this Thursday night. If you feel uncomfortable talking politics, just read what others are saying. I guarantee that it will be educational and entertaining. I also think that you'll pay attention differently to what is happening during the debate.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Following people in Twitter through RSS

A few people are using Twitter for current awareness, which means they want to see every tweet that comes to them. While you can scroll through older tweets, you won't be able to see all of them. The solution is to receive your tweets through RSS and Twitter does supply an RSS feed. The problem is that it doesn't work and that is a known problem. The solution is easy, but doesn't require you to do a couple of things.

First, go to your Twitter account and click on the RSS icon at the bottom of the page. Please copy the URL that it gives you into a blank document. For me, the URL is:

http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/5611412.rss

Yours will be different, but it will contains a piece of important information that you will need.

The format for the RSS feed URL is actually:

http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/XXXXX.rss

Copy that into your document so you can modify it.

Now here is how to alter it:

1. Enter your Twitter username where the word USERNAME is.
2. Enter your Twitter password where the word PASSWORD is. Be sure to leave the colon (:) in between.
3. In place of the XXXXX, enter the number from your original URL. For example, mine was 5611412 and be sure to leave the .rss at the end.

Now you can use this new URL in order to subscribe to your Twitter feed. Remember this will allow you to see past tweets (all of them) that come to you. If seeing every tweet doesn't matter to you, then you will not need this. But for those of you who are using Twitter for current awareness, this will be a great help to you.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Blog post: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

If you are using Twitter already, many of these will be obvious. Sinnce doing customer service via Twitter may not be intuitive, here are three examples:

• Someone from Bloglines (an RSS reader) is monitoring Twitter for comments about their beta product and service issues.
• Comcast has become famous for their use of Twitter. Frank has reached out to Comcast uses all across the country via Twitter to help them with service problems.
• Felicia's Atomic Lounge uses Twitter to announce events and specials.

How could you be using Twitter to reach out and support your customers? Perhaps all you need to do is to make yourself available to talk?

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Technorati tag: Twitter

TechCrunch: The Rise and Fall of Twitter

This is a parody video that uses a scene from the movie "Der Untergang". As John Biggs of TechCrunch reminds us, this short parody is not about Hitler, but about Twitter. (Rated "L" for language)

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Technorati tag: Twitter

From Twitter to FriendFeed

It has been very cool to see conferences use Twitter so their participants can communicate in real-time. It is perhaps this use of Twitter that has sent the service repeatedly over capacity.

We know that investors are pumping money into Twitter, but the impact of that money hasn't yet been felt. Miracles cannot occur overnight. So what do we do?

Yesterday, some of my Twitter friends announced that they were moving -- perhaps temporarily -- to FriendFeed. It only took 1-2 people to make the announcement in order to get more of us to go with them. I didn't have a FriendFeed account until yesterday, but now have one setup and am getting used to it. It is very different from Twitter and not a Twitter replacement. For example, you can post to Twitter from a number of different devices and services, but the same may not be as true for FriendFeed. (I'm saying that based on a Twitter conversation this morning.)

FriendFeed has a blog and they've been posting tutorials in the blog, for example:

• Ross's FriendFeed Tutorial #1: Using FriendFeed's "Hide" features
• Ross's FriendFeed Tutorial #2: Email Pictures To FriendFeed Using Mail2FF
• Ross's FriendFeed Tutorial #3: FriendFeed Rooms

Is FriendFeed "in" and Twitter "out"? Who knows. Personally, I hope that Twitter gets its act together. I -- and others -- like the service. Many people are just figuring out how to use it. And its great for conferences. For now, I'm using both and if my friends decide to abandon Twitter, I may have to do too. How useful is a social networking tool, when none of your friends are there?

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Twitter, FriendFeed

How are libraries using Twitter?

Ellyssa Kroski has written a wonderful article that highlights some of the real life uses of Twitter by libraries. For example:

“Twitter is just one of the Web 2.0 technologies that we are using to engage students within our traditional Web page (www.pasadena.edu/library),” says Mary Ann Laun, assistant dean of library services at Shatford. “We highlight events, interesting stats, and curious facts in an effort to call attention to some of the great things happening in the library. From announcements such as 'the system is down, ask for help at the Reference desk’ to special events, we have fun conveying quick messages to students.”

I am finding that more and more people are using Twitter and many more people are curious about it. Those who are already Twittering understand its power. Articles like Kroski's help to tell others why microblogging (whether using Twitter or something else) is becoming essential to many people and organizations.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Using hashtags in Twitter

Many tools have been developed for Twitter and one is the hashtag. The hashtag (#hashtag) provides a way for a tweet to be directed at a group and disseminated to people in that group. Daniel Lee has set up a Twitter account for the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference and a hashtag to go with it. Everyone who follows SLA2008 can have their tweets resent to everyone else who is following SLA2008 by using the hashtag #sla2008. This means I can tweet as I normally do, and only direct specific messages to my SLA buddies. Daniel has done a good job explaining this and providing additional resources for people to read. Now it will be interesting to see how this works at the conference!

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Blog post: When Micro-blogging Grows Up

I am now running into people who have heard of Twitter, but haven't used it. That means that micro0blogging is coming out of being a niche product. In this blog post, Ben Lorica writes about the trends he sees in micro-blogging. He notes that we still need more stable services and business models as microblogging grows beyond its current uses.

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Technorati tags: Twitter, Microblogging

Blog post: Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide

A Twitter-buddy John Whiteside found this. The blogger, Christina Laun, includes information on:

• What is Twitter?
• Ways To Use Twitter
• Guides
• Studies and Articles
• Tools and Add-ons
• Libraries Using Twitter

This is much more organized that my ramblings on Twitter and hopefully will give librarians -- and others -- ideas of how to use it. Of course, in order to know if it will work for you, you'll have to jump in and try it (REALLY try it, not just a two-second look-see).

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Who is following whom?

Online social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, for example, want you to see who you are connected to, and sometimes who they are connected to. This is your circle of influence or the circle from which you might find needed resources (even job openings).

TwitterWheel is the latest tool to visually show connections between people. Below is my TwitterWheel. These are all the people I'm following (on May 6, 2008) and then shows if they are following anyone else on the wheel.



I can hear you say, "this is cute and a waste." Perhaps. What I see, when I look at some of the detail, are people who should be introduced to each other. These are people who are not following each other, but should be. I also see newsfeeds that I am following that I should tell others about. I see more connections that need to be made, so the circle of influence is stronger.

Thanks to Maurice for showing me this tool.

Note: May 7, 9 a.m., TwitterWheel seems to be broken. Bad timing. I do hope it is fixed soon.

May 9, 2008, 11:30 a.m., WOW...TwitterWheel is GONE! What happened? Was it just a flash in the pan?

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Twitter

“What the heck is Twitter and why should I care?” (Alan Cann)

Thanks to David Rothman for pointing me to this.

| View | Upload your own

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Blog post: 5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter

I mentioned this blog post to a person who attended the panel discussion on "Blogging for Business" tonight at the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce. I had the best luck with Twubble in finding more people that I wanted to follow on Twitter.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

What are the White House & Congress doing?

Thanks to the (almost) Bald Trainer blog for discovering that the White House, House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are all using Twitter. This afternoon, I've received updated on what is happening on the House floor and the votes that are being taken. The last tweets from the Senate were last week on votes they were taking. What is interesting about the votes is that they come with a link to a page that shows how everyone voted! And the White House tweeted yesterday about a speech the President gave.

How do they do this? Turns out you can send an RSS feed to Twitter, which then people can follow (the Twitter term for "sign up for").

Besides following the government, I'm also getting news updates and a few blog RSS feeds. While this does duplicate what I can receive elsewhere, I'm using a FireFox add-on called TwitterFox that gives me a collapsible window in the lower right corner of the screen where the tweets appear. This has turned out to be very handy. Someone has constructed a wiki on Twitter that contains a list of informational feeds that are available. The variety is pretty amazing.

mmm...I wonder if "W" knows he's Twittering?

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Technorati tag: Twitter

Lovin' the tools

Last week I was at a conference of 2200+ people where the social networking tools where not just talked about, they were used. The conference generated 300+ blog posts and many photos (3,000+). With more 40 bloggers at the conference, a tremendous amount of content was created that summarized and discussed the sessions as well as provided other information. Since most of the presentations (e.g., PowerPoint) will be online eventually, I wonder if a formal proceedings is needed anymore for this conference. The documents in the proceedings were submitted weeks ago and may not mirror what some people presented. In fact, not everyone submits materials for the proceedings, so what you have access to via the blog posts, etc., is more complete.

The photos allow you to see what the conference really looked like and what the attendees did. If you had never been to this conference and wanted to know what to expect, the photos would tell you!

I haven't used the word "wiki", but there was also a wiki for the conference that was begun months before the conference took place. Many people contributed to the wiki and even more used the information that was placed there.

In addition to those tools, people were using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Meebo and other tools both day and night. People used the tools to talk about the sessions (as they were going on), make plans, ask for help, and do networking.

Did everyone at the conference use these tools? No. And given the problems we had with wifi at the hotel, I'm glad that all 2200+ people weren't trying to blog, twitter, and updated their Facebook status. However, enough people were using the tools so that it had a discernible impact on the conference. More was organized on an ad hoc basis, more was being accomplished and more people were "in the know" even if they weren't using on of the tools.

The result was a very active conference with information flowing freely and quickly. And isn't that what we want?!

What tools will you be using at your next conference? Can you incorporate some of the tools I've mentioned in order to make the information flow more freely?

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Technorati tag: Social Networking Tools

Twitter in plain English & in 2.5 minutes

If you have had a hard time understanding or explaining Twitter, this short video should help.

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Technorati tag: Twitter

How to find Twitterers (twits) near you

Want to find people who are using Twitter that are geographically near you? Try TwitDir. Pretty cool! Bet you'll find a few people to follow using that.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Twitter

One woman's experience with Twitter

The New York Times today has an article that chronicles one woman's experience in trying to use Twitter with her family. The bottom line, they didn't get it. Walter J. Carl, an assistant professor of communications studies at Northeastern University, said:

The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.

I find Twitter to be an excellent tool for:

• Offering and receiving support
• Exchanging short bits of information
• Making people aware of what you do

However, for it to be productive, you need to be Twittering with a group of people that you have something in common with. They may be friends, work colleagues, or fellow hobbyists. Without that group, Twitter is meaningless.

And Twittering with people you barely know is okay. You may find that Twitter helps you to get to know them better and build trust....all stepping stones for successful networking.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Twitter

Article: (part 2) Social Networking Tools: Let's Be Social

[This article is divided into three parts: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. This article was previously published in the November 2007 issue of the RPCN Newsletter and a version of this article appeared in Oct/Nov issue of the Bulletin of the Information Technology Division/SLA.]

SHARE

The power in using social networking tools for sharing is that you can share what you know AND you can benefit from what other people have shared. Tools that fall into this category include blogs, micro-blogs, wikis (discussed below), and photo, video and presentation sharing web sites.

A blog is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Think of each blog entry (post) as a short article. Most blogs allow for comments, which means that readers can add information or feedback on specific posts. Business blogs are often focused on specific topics where the authors share information that they have with their readers. Since a blog can have a tremendous amount of content, blogs often rank well in search engine results. If you are trying to establish yourself as an expert, a blog can help you do that. I used my blog (www.digitization101.com) to establish an international reputation in digitization. That reputation did not come overnight, but was built by consistently adding to my blog and then marketing my blog constantly.

There are several places were you can build a blog for free including Blogger.com (owned by Google), WordPress.com and Vox.com. There are actually many web sites were blogs can be built. Please think about what functionality you want in order to decide what site/software is best for you.

Micro-blogs are places where you can send and receive short messages (under 140 characters) with a group of people. They are different from instant messenger services because you are broadcasting your messages to a group of people, not just to one person. Micro-blogs are an interesting way of sharing information with people you know. I'll admit that you can't really understand a micro-blog unless you use one. The one I'm using is Twitter.com (see http://twitter.com/jahurst/with_friends). I don't use Twitter every day, but I have found it a great way of feeling connected with others, and of exchanging information. I do receive useful information from colleagues via Twitter that I know I would not have received otherwise.

There are many sites for sharing photos, videos and presentations. Photos can be shared at Flickr.com, PhotoBucket.com, and KoffeePhoto.com. I use Flickr because I have colleagues that use Flickr. Most photo sharing sites are free, but may charge once you get above a specific number of photos. (Some people have thousands of photos online!) Although I began using Flickr as a way of sharing fun photos, I quickly found business uses for the service:

• Post screen shots of presentations.
• Post information that you want people to review or comment on.
• Post photos to use for instruction (formally or informally).
• Store photos that you want to use on your organization's web site, then use a widget to display those photos.
• Search photos for ideas.

For more information on these five uses, go to http://tinyurl.com/yowd74 .

When we think of videos, many of us think of YouTube.com, but there are actually other services for sharing videos (e.g., Yahoo and Google). Although you may not have video to share, think of searching these sites for videos on business topics that are of interest to you (e.g., 7 Behaviors of Business Success). Many reputable organizations are placing their videos in these services as a way of spreading their message or sharing important information. I now incorporate YouTube videos into several of my workshops because they do an excellent job of illustrating key points.

I put my presentations on my web site, but I could place them in a presentation sharing service like SlideShare.net. (Actually one presentation is there at http://tinyurl.com/yqnswg .) This service allows people to upload and share presentation for free. If you don't have presentations to share (or don't want to share them in this way), you can still use SlideShare to find presentations that interest you. There are presentations on many business topics.

If you need to share your bookmarks (or favorites) from your Internet browser, there are tools for that too. This can be useful if you are collecting bookmarks on a specific topic and then need to share them with your clients or partners. One site for sharing bookmarks is http://del.icio.us. I have found del.icio.us important in working with one specific client. (I've since gotten additional mileage out of those bookmarks with other colleagues.) No need to worry about emailing URLs and having them "break;" I just tell people by del.icio.us account information. To see my bookmarks on podcasting, go to http://del.icio.us/jahurst/podcast .

** Continued in Part 3 **

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Sharing, Collaborating, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging, SlideShare, Flickr, delicious

Article: (part 3) Social Networking Tools: Let's Be Social

[This article is divided into three parts: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. This article was previously published in the November 2007 issue of the RPCN Newsletter and a version of this article appeared in Oct/Nov issue of the Bulletin of the Information Technology Division/SLA.]

COLLABORATE

I am writing this article using Google Docs (docs.google.com). Google provides software that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations on its web site, with many of the features or functionality that you are already familiar. The files are password protected, but I would not place anything in them that was proprietary or confidential. Google Docs allows you to create and edit a files with a group of collaborators, whom you select. Multiple people can edit the files at the same time. Google keeps track of the changes (revisions) and the person who makes them. (That information is viewable, if necessary.) I find Google Docs and Zoho (www.zoho.com), which provides even more tools, to be great tools when working at a distance with a colleague. There is no need to email files back-n-forth and worry about who has the correct version. In one instance, a group of more than a dozen people edited a procedures manual in Google Docs. We were able to make changes effortlessly, leave comments, and mark text that needed to be discussed. This allowed the group to work faster and more accurately.

At their core, wikis are a way of collaborating or allowing a group to share what they know on a specific subject. The most famous wiki is wikipedia.org, which is an encyclopedia being built by thousands of people. Wikis are a great way of building and maintaining manuals, since they often require input from several people and need to be maintained by several people. Many wiki web sites allow wikis to be built for free, but your wiki will likely have ads in it. To eliminate the ads, you may need a fee-based account. To find a wiki that suits your needs, check the wiki matrix at www.wikimatrix.org.

Why am I using Google Docs for writing this article? I'm on my laptop and don't want to have to transfer the file to my desktop to edit later. With this document in Google Docs, I can work on it from either machine, or from another location, as I tweak my wording. In this case, I'm using Google Docs as my word processor instead of MS Word. (By the way, you can export documents created in Google Docs using several common formats, including MS Word.)

Both Google Docs and Zoho are free. I should note that Google has taken some criticism recently of their licensing agreement on Google Docs (see http://tinyurl.com/yqr9r4). At the moment, I don't see a need for concern, but we should all remember that we're using a service that we don't ultimately control.

CUT DOWN YOUR PHONE BILL

We've heard of voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) or broadband phones. If you are not using a broadband phone service (e.g., Time Warner), you can still take advantage of the technology using services such as Skype.com. I decided to use Skype in January 2007, when I realized that I was going to be on a many long distance conversations with clients this year. For $30/year (plus a $25 headset), I can use Skype to call any telephone in the U.S. or Canada. Yes, unlimited phone calls for $30/year. Calling international is also very inexpensive. The call quality is very good and I have definitely received my money's worth. You can also send and receive instant messages through Skype as well as exchange video.

ONE MORE TOOL

Likely you've noticed that some of the URLs in this article are from tinyURL.com. Instead of emailing or printing long URLs, you can use tools such as tinyURL.com or DigBig.com to create short, easy to type URLs. Both services are free and very easy to use.

EVERY DAY & EVERY WEEK

I use at least two social networking tools every day. Besides blogging every day, during a typical week, I'm on instant messenger, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Depending on what I'm doing, I'll also be on YouTube and spending time in a virtual world (SecondLife.com). Over the last year, I've cutback some tools (e.g., MySpace) and adopted others (e.g., Twitter). The tools I'm using now are useful to me and are easy to use. I know that in the next year, the tools I use will continue to change. I keep an eye on my colleagues and see what they are using, as well as trial tools that sound of interest. However, I won't adopt a tool unless I know that there are others using the tool that are in my circle. Social networking tools are meant to be learned and used socially. So I'll learn the new tools with my friends and adopt what the group adopts.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Sharing, Collaborating, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging, Flickr,Facebook, MySpace, Google, Zoho, TinyURL