Month: April 2008

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piles of books

You mean like – books?

Yes, I do mean books. Since I’ve started playing with the what social networking/social media might mean to me, I’ve bought more non-fiction books in the last 3 months than fiction.

Some of this has been catch-up – I’d heard of the long tail, I’d hear mavens mentioned…

Some have been as the result of my own research – looking for social capital I’d hear about Bowling Alone…

Shirky’s book was as a result of seeing Bill Barnett (@bb42) tweeting about some of Clay Shirky’s writings and me saying, “Wow, what should I start with?”

I love playing with the toys, but I think it’s even more important to try and get an understanding of how this area is formed and where it’s moving…

… and for me, that’s largely by reading what others have written.

Recent reading

This is my current list, most recent first – the first two still being read.

  • Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
  • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams
  • The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few by James Surowiecki
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand by Chris Anderson
  • Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam

What are you reading?

I’d really like to know your reading suggestions – mainly printed word, as I think RSS feeds are a matter for another post…

… which might be next week.

Picture Credit gadl

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jigsaw imageHow to deal with multiplicity?
I’m deeply puzzled – not that this is at all unusual.
There are lots of social media tools, and many of them link to each other. Like quite a lot of dabblers, I’ve ended up with a mish-mash of updates appearing in varied places. How best to use the wide variety of social media tools at my disposal? I’m coming to the conclusion I need to list and separate what I use – and how.

What do I use?
I’m trying a fair range of things. A fairly full list is below, sorted more or less in frequency of update.

Do I set my location?
Well, yes. Sort of. When I remember.
Largely I use microformats in twitter, as I indicated in Twitter – what it is, and how I use it.
I’ve also used Plazes.
I’m registered with FireEagle but no-one seems to be using that.

How do I update these?
On the web interfaces, often.
For twitter I’ve used and like both snitter and twhirl
For pownce, I’ve used a similar air client.
I’ve updated via voice on phone using Spinvox and by SMS to twitter. I’ve also used ping.fm both on the web and as a WAP client on my mobile.

Where are they aggregated/streamed?
Often, bits are currently fed one to another – meaning that twitter feeds to jaiku, which feeds to Facebook, which feeds to friendfeed – which is echoed back to Facebook. Which is cluttered, untidy, and very likely the sign of a grasshopper mind.

I currently have some life streaming services I’m playing with at the moment, friendfeed which though I like the interface doesn’t seem to pick up all that’s going on – and onaswarm which gives a nice feel for what’s happening in my area. I’ve also given soup.io a shot but I haven’t made my mind up about that yet.

Which way am I heading?
I think I’m going to bite the bullet and take out all the inter-tool updates, with the probable exception of twitterfeed which lets people know when I’ve blogged.

Then it’ll be twitter for quick “What I’m doing/thinking”; del.icio.us for those important bookmarks; tumblr for future blogging ideas or GTD Someday/Maybe, Facebook for contacts, flickr for photos.
I’ll – eventually – choose an aggregator, probably friendfeed as it seems to be gaining traction…

Maybe, then, people won’t see the same wibble in 4 places from me – and won’t that be an improvement?

What are you doing?
I’d like to find out what others are doing.
Are you more choosy than me?
Am I a grasshopper bouncing from one thing to another?

Please, let me know your solutions.

Partial Inspiration
This is also the first blog post I’ve tried following Chris Brogan’s guidelines to Writing Effective Blog Posts. How was it for you?

Picture Credit place light – on a a project –