Tag: social networks

Why should I tweet?

There are a several reasons to get a twitter account. I can list a few here, but of course there are others and combinations of the reasons I put here.

* Business – You have a business and you want another way to market it.

Twitter is still a new medium and lots of companies want to jump this train too. Some with better result than others. Personally I never follow any business that only tweets about new deals. I have a few exceptions though, a few small businesses that tweet about other things too. Twitter is and should be personal. Endless tweets about marketing aren’t interesting.

* Special interests – You are very interested in a certain subject and want to either broadcast your message or follow others who do.

Here too, there’s a mixed result. We have all seen them. The bots that tweet out endless retweets where people have mentioned the interesting word, maybe totally out of context. Having said that, I have to admit I have a tweetbot. What I realized was that I can’t let it lose without any checking up. I also state clearly in the info that it is a bot and what it does. Some like the service and some don’t.

* Entertainment purposes

You tweet with likeminded people, maybe following a certain hashtag (will tell more about those in another post), like #Frys or #Writechat for instance.

* Networking purposes

You follow people that might help you in different areas. Could be for your career or a hobby. Remember that they are persons just like you. Twitter is like real life. It’s just as much about giving as about taking.

I have probably forgotten other reasons, but these are the ones I can think of right now.

You can classify tweeters like this:

* Broadcasters – These are mainly on twitter to send information and not to receive. Here you’ll find businesses, celebrities, organizations or pseudo-celebrities (people who consider themselves authorities in certain areas.

* Information seekers – They are mainly on twitter to find information. It can be fans of a celebrity, it can be customers hunting for deals or people interested in a certain topic. Those who fall into this group use twitter as a fancy rss reader and don’t tweet as much.

* Introspectors – They are mainly on twitter to broadcast what they are doing. Their main goal is to put their thoughts into words, not that anyone actually read them. Feedback is good, but not necessary.

* Communicators – They are on twitter to make friends or to network. It’s important for them to find like-minded people to follow. Feedback is really important.

* Collectors – They collect followers and follow as many as they can. It doesn’t matter as much if the followers have the same interests as themselves mostly the numbers counts.

Which twitter type are you?

More online communities 2

I’m very interested in learning new languages and practicising the ones I already know (to some extent). Over the years I’ve been a member of a couple of different ones. The one I’ve liked best is LiveMocha. It works like this: if you’re studying a language, you can get help from native speakers. Or you can help someone studying your language. Many people ask me for help with Swedish language exercises and once someone even asked me for help with one in French. It wasn’t hard, fortunately, something like what I did when I first began to study French at the age of 13.

Since I’m a major booklover, I’ve joined three (four if you count a Swedish one) book sites.

LibraryThing
GoodReads
Shelfari

You can post all your books (or as in my case, the titles I can remember – long story), read reviews or post reviews. There are more features but those are the ones I’ve used. You can post a LibraryThing author tag cloud in the sidebar of your WordPress blog or in some other places too, if you want them to show up on your blog. There are other widgets that you can post too.

Second Life is a community, but it’s a bit different from many others. It’s in 3D. You get an avatar (not quite like in the movie) that can move around and interact with other avatars. You can customize that avatar pretty much any way you like, add virtual pets, change hairdos and go on shopping sprees with it. If you’re interested in building/creating things in a 3D environment, you can, but you’ll need to pay a little to upload your ‘textures’. You can ‘buy’ or rent ‘land’ and all kinds of things. And you can chat. Voicechat or text chat, whatever you like.

I’m not entirely happy about SL. You hardly ever run into so many nutcases as you do there. Some can be very annoying. Many people have ‘sexual’ relations in there. Cartoon sex. Pretend sex. LOL. (I didn’t make this up, but it’s too funny not to share it: Second Life – where men are men, and so are the women, and the children are FBI.)  It’s also very much about money, though you can experience SL without paying for anything other than your computer, software and internet connection. There are an almost limilless number of ‘sims’ – regions – that can be beautiful and intricate and fascinating. And you can go ‘shopping’ in huge stores. Strangely enough, it’s very relaxing. I’m not really into shopping in real life, but in SL I love to browse those stores, even though most of the clothes in there are slutty, to put it bluntly. My sister and I have had to learn to design our own, but that’s another story.

There are real businesses in SL and some universities teach courses in the 3D environment, so it’s not all ‘fake’. I’ve heard companies have staff meetings in SL and I know real famous singers have concerts there. The trouble is I always get to hear about it too late. Apparently, you can also ‘watch tv/movies’ too, but I’ve never tried that. You can also display your photos or art work. It’s a bit difficult to learn to move around in there, but I’m living proof you can learn how to do it. I even made a good friend in there, which was totally unexpected.

More online communities

At one time or another I’ve been on most of the major social networks (MySpace, HI5 and Friendster). I suppose I liked MySpace the best, but in the end, I left (twice). I read somewhere that it’s a bit like coming to a major central railway station hoping to meet people. It won’t work. You’ll need to get to know them from somewhere else or get someone you know already to introduce you. That’s very true. I never made any friends, and the only contacts I really had were with people I knew from somewhere else.

Ning is a social network for – creating social networks. You get to have your own network or networks. It’s really quite cool. You get most features that you get on other social networks, but this one is all yours and you can customize it, invite the members you like etc. There’s a photo gallery feature, a chat room, a forum and a blog among other things. You can also add widgets – little mini programs that can do all kinds of things.

My favorite social networks are special interest sites. Some of them will undoubtedly be interests you don’t share, so you’ll just have to skip them.

First of all, I’m a vegan, animal lover and animal rights advocate. I’m also concerned about the environment.

One of the biggest’green’ social networks I’ve joined, is Care2. You can get a free webmail address, a photo album with unlimited storage – limited per month, send virtual e-cards that help save the rainforest, join groups (some of them are very active), sign online petitions, click to generate free donations and much more. There are also many interesting articles about all kinds of causes – the environment, politics, human rights, animal rights (they call it *welfare* and that’s one of the things I don’t like so much about it) etc. You also get a profile page you can customize. Recently, they added a sort of payment system where you can earn ‘credits’ and then use them to pay for something or other, for instance, give a cup of clean water to a Haitian child. When you’ve donated or redeemed your credits or signed a petition you can tweet it to your friends or share it some other way. Care2 makes sharing easy.

I’ve also joined several vegan and animal rights sites. Feel free to ignore this bit.

VegSpace
VeganWorld
VeganForce
Vegppl
AnimalRights Community Online

So far I haven’t made any new friends at any of these, so maybe I shouldn’t even have recommended them, but for me it’s important to be a part of the veg*an community. I like them, but they feel very much like MySpace except with a cause I can relate to. I’ve also joined several vegan dating sites. (You can specify you’re just looking for friends, if that’s what you want). I’ve actually made a few friends that way, but unfortunately, just like all other friends, online or otherwise, some have drifted away. It’s been quite a long time since I made any new friends, so maybe the sites have changed or rather the people using them. In fact, though I’m still single, I’m not really looking for dates online anymore. In any case, these are the ones I’ve tried:

VeggieConnection
VeggieDate.org
VeganPassions (there are many other passions sites – for just about any interest you might have) and you don’t have to look for a partner, just friends will do.

Since i’m an animal lover, I’m also a member of several sites for animal lovers.

Petster
Dogster
Catster
Bunspace

You get to upload photos, fill out a profile page, mainly for your baby, but also for yourself – on Petster. On Catster and Dogster there are also plenty of articles about cats or dogs and groups with forums for people who love the same type of animals you do.