Torn Elements

Once again, FaceBook rumours are circulating about them wanting to charge their users $50/Month starting on July 8th, 2010.

How many times have we seen this over the last few years? Each time the rumour starts, many groups get started to protest this fictitious  charge. Like Lemmings, as soon as one misinformed person dives into the group, several hundred thousand follow.

See all those ads that appear on FaceBook? THIS is how they make their money – not from their users. Their whole business model is based on FREE ACCESS for it’s users. To do anything else would be effectively shooting themselves in the foot – and they know this!

A charge for FaceBook just isn’t going to happen. So stop joining these groups! You’re doing nothing but feeding the fire while at the same time making yourself look foolish.

Social Media FaceBook, Rumours, Social Media

As you may or may not know, FaceBook gives you the option of hiding your online status. It’s located as an option within the footer chat box. Simply open the chat box, hit options then click ‘go offline’. This effectively makes you invisible to your connected friends.

There is a way to easily find out how many people are hiding their status. For this to work you must physically log out of FaceBook (by hitting the logout link), then log back in. Once logged back in don’t click anything. Simply have a look at your friends list on the sidebar then compare that number to those in the Chat applet.

This example shows 2 more people in the chat applet than there is on the sidebar. This indicates that 2 people are hiding their online status. If you click the chat applet, those extra two friends in the count will disappear and the sidebar and chat applet will then match.

This will only show you how many friends are hidden, not who they are.

Also keep in mind the date of this posting. This small glitch my be fixed or could disappear the next time FaceBook rolls out there newest page layout.

This likely falls into the category of ‘useless information’ but thought I would post it anyway. I found it interesting. 

Social Media FaceBook, Social Media

One of the first things suggested to me in regard to blogging was to have my picture taken and start plastering that along side my name as my avatar. Branding… bla bla bla.

As good as this idea was I have an aversion to having my picture taken. I hate it! I’m much like my father in this way. In fact, the last time I had my picture taken (that I know of) was for my 20 year old driver’s license. We all know how ‘good’ those pictures can be.

My fake smile comes off as ‘creepy’ every time, in my opinion. So instead of creeping out the entire blogosphere, I’ve decided to go the mascot route.

Allow me to introduce you to Kaffy – The Kaffeinated Kitty. Kaffy’s been with me for a number of years now and we’ve been through thick and thin together. He’s appeared with such slogans as ‘Coffee Addict’, ‘More Coffee’ and ‘Juan Valdez is my buddy’ and currently sits beside several thousand forum posts across the web. He’s associated with my forum nickname of StarLab.

If you see Kaffy now, the first thing you should think is: ‘OMG! It’s Larry!’ The second thing you should think is: ‘I Need Coffee!’

My buddy Kaffy – Saving the Internet from my creepy smile. lol

Odds N Ends Asides, Social Media

I’m guessing the more experienced among us can go grab a smoke and coffee while I, once again, talk about starting up.

Too much information (TMI) and not enough time can be a harsh cocktail. If you’re like me then you have a real life job to work at too. So how do you manage your time effectively when dealing with all the information that flows on a daily basis?

On a previous venture into blogging I made the mistake of trying to follow everything. I’d obtained an exported OPML for my RSS reader containing hundreds of feeds and signed up to all the hot social sites. It was too much and I found myself turned away rather than inspired to continue. 

This time around I’m taking it slower. Instead of someone else’s OPML file I’m building my own RSS subscriptions in the areas that interest me alone. Much less clutter. I can follow a couple dozen blogs better than a couple hundred. Same thing with social sites. I’m following/friending fewer people this time also.

Don’t get me wrong. I doubt things will remain this light as I continue on. I may end up at those several hundred feeds and many friends at some point anyway, but at least it will be a silent progression rather than a cacophony hitting me all at once. Perhaps the future will allow more time to handle the load.

I guess the point here is ease yourself in. There’s nothing worse than sitting there at 4:30am with an unfinished post and having to work at 8am. Why did you stay up all night sidetracked from what you set out to do?

Stay focused. Less can actually mean more in the long run. (You are in this for the long run, right? )

Blog Startup Blog Startup, Social Media

I’m still not seeing what the attraction is but the damned place attracts millions of people from all over the globe. There is no question that this is THE hot spot on the Internet.

None of what Facebook offers is new to me in any way. I’ve been chatting, playing online games, and communicating with people online since 1985. It’s little wonder why I find it boring.

However, since starting this blog I’ve been thinking about Facebook in the capacity of a promotional tool. Certainly sounded like a good idea.

However, after reading Nick Bradbury’s post The Great Un-Friending of 2009 I realized the flaw in my thinking.

Anyway…because I never used Facebook, I just blindly friended anyone and everyone.  Which now, of course, makes it such a noisy place that I can’t possibly spend any time there.

This is exactly the place I found myself now. Since your reach only goes as far as your friend list, you need to add massive amounts of people as friends in order to benefit yourself in any possible way.

I’d added quite a few new people in the last couple weeks in hope of expanding my reach. The result was a noise level unlike anything I’d seen before! Emails, alerts, requests, this, that, and the other. There literally was no peace until I followed Nick’s lead. I un-friended many of the newly added ones earlier tonight. Back to my original short list of close friends.

Ahhh… some peace at last! (No offense to anyone dropped)

Will I be using Facebook for Blog Promotion? If I think something I’ve written here will interest any of my close friends then I may share it there. Otherwise, I doubt Facebook will play any significant part in my promotion.

Am I giving up too soon? Is there a way to use Facebook effectively and noise-free? If so, please comment because I’m not seeing it.

Blog Promotion Blog Promotion, Social Media

Sometimes I think I take the long road just because the short road may not be interesting enough. Today’s post illustrates this perfectly.

Now that the site is somewhat complete my thoughts have been turning to getting the word out. I’ll be joining several social networks in the coming days (weeks?), so I’ll be posting about them once I’ve formulated a few thoughts in their use.

My first stop in doing this was Twitter. Great little social utility and appears simple enough. The hardest part of using it is the selection of a suitable Twitter Client.

The Long Road

The first client suggested to me was twirl. A brief visit to their website informed me that Adobe Air needed to be installed on my system first. Great! More overhead to strain FrankenPuter (a computer built from the dead bodies of 4 other computers).

Deciding to pass on installing more overhead, my thoughts turned to a .NET application. At least I already had that installed!

I decided to give a .NET client a try as I figured it would require no additional installs to get it to run. A simple solution to my aversion to installing more stuff, right?

Wrong! Sure, the client installed in seconds, but it also initiated a download/install of additional .NET crap which took approximately 30 minutes to install. Then, the horrors of all horrors presented itself. A reboot. Gah! (This was seriously starting to cut in on my ‘goofing around’ time!)

Once rebooted the above mentioned client installed itself quite quickly. After taking a quick (?!) 5 minutes to restart all my desktop apps, I launched it. Cannot connect and other error messages dominated the rest of my hour.

Where did this simple task go wrong? Join Twitter, grab a client, done! How hard can this be? As it turns out, not hard at all.

The Short Road

I was not getting any younger here! This above process had now wasted an hour and a half of my life. Screw it!

Install AIR, twirl, done! (With NO reboots!)

I was installed, connected, and ready to tweet within minutes. Ah yes, the boring Short Road.

FrankenPuter will just have to deal with it.

If you’re interested at all, you can follow me: http://twitter.com/LarryMonte

Blog Promotion Asides, Blog Promotion, Social Media