Jeremy Sisson » Social

The Evolution of Talk Radio?

jsisson — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:58:56 +0000

I’ve never enjoyed listening to music on the radio very much. What they play is never the kind of thing I like, and besides, its like listening to someone else’s playlist. I do, however, enjoy talk radio. There are some interesting people and discussions, there is some commentary on current events, and then some public opinion. Talk radio has been providing this kind of open discussion for years. Blogs and social networks have been great to develop this kind of thing online, but radio is where some of this started. Will the Internet doom radio the way it is newspapers?

Recently some of the radio shows I listen to have been offering Twitter feeds of their topics, and even providing on the air interaction with twitter users. Sometimes I have considered sharing my opinion during a radio show, but I’m not a big fan of the phone. In this same context, however, Twitter is almost the exact equivalent of a phone call. Radio shows typically accept a short statement from a call in user, and then the host replies. Isn’t this basically what Twitter is?

There is a lot of interesting ways to connect the offline world to the online. I think Twitter makes a great companion to radio talk shows, and it will allow them to stay relevant as more people start looking to the Internet for their information and social opinion.

The Internet Never Forgets…

jsisson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:11:25 +0000

Blogging and Twitter, and the Social Network sites will all encourage you to share your experiences and opinions. This is where the whole “Social” thing comes in. However, there is a definite line to think about when posting about yourself.

The Internet never forgets. Anything that gets posted will eventually be indexed by the search engines and other caching servers, which will store that content forever. This is great for keeping historical records of news and such, but it will also store your photos, blog posts and tweets, and anything you say in a forum.

These things will be saved, and will all be part of your brand whether you like it or not. When people search for your name, they will find everything you have ever said or done on the Internet. They will find the cooking tips you posted on Facebook, and the tweets you made about how much you dislike your job. What will future employers or clients think about these?

Assume everything you post can be found by everyone you know. Will they like what they find? Go ahead and share, but think before you post!

Hot Tips for the Twitter Newbie!

jsisson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:25:47 +0000

So you’ve decided to check out this Twitter thing. Starting with a blank slate can be intimidating. So many users! What do you talk about? Who cares what I think anyways?

Think about your goals. Do you want to promote yourself? Do you want to promote your company? Maybe you just want to socialize.

Here are a few tips I can suggest:

1) Try and find people local to you. Go to the Twitter Advanced Search page and find people near you. At the very least you can complain about the weather!

2) Use the Twitter search to find people that share your interests, and start following them. Maybe you like video games or baseball? The search interface can be very useful! search.twitter.com.

3) Think about the websites you read, and the blogs that you follow. Are any of the authors using Twitter? Follow them! BONUS: If you tweet at them and they tweet back, their reply will show up in their feed, and some of their followers might follow you!

4) Just start tweeting! Talk about the things you are doing. People will find you based on your tweets about your interests (probably using the Twitter search). If you are slick enough, you can optimize your tweets for searchability (then people will find you).

For example, rather than tweet something like “On my way to work today, it’s raining”, try posting “Commuting on the GO Train on my way to Toronto. Damn this Canadian weather!”. It will appeal to people searching for commuting, go trains, toronto, canada, and weather!

5) Follow lots of people, and socialize, but remember, it’s not a competition to gather the most followers. If you have too many, your Twitter feed will be too cluttered to be useful. Don’t be afraid to “prune” your followers.

And finally:

6) It might feel like you’re “Stalking” people when you follow them… but you’re not, this is how Twitter works! Think about it, they’re tweeting, so they WANT people to read it.

Have fun! (oh, and follow me!)

I Am Not A Blogger

jsisson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:41:43 +0000

I’ve been playing around with the technologies of Social Media for a long time. I’ve tried blogging on a number of occasions, and usually my motivation to write dies out after about 6 months. I’ve never felt that I was that great at writing content, so my interest dies out after a while. I even find the word “blog” kinda… you know… ugh.

I have always believed though, that while I have not been producing content for a blog, I have been cranking out applications and scripts to provide a platform for these social media technologies. The developer in me wants to build things better and easier than the applications I try, so I have been building application frameworks, content management systems, and everything else I can for the last 10 years. The scripts have been my content.

A friend of mine has been pushing me to start again, though. We have some interesting discussions, and he maintains that if I just write down the stuff that I come up with that people will find it interesting, and I need to stop keeping it to myself! So, here I am going to try again, and write about things like online collaboration and technologies, and try to provide some insight into how these powerful tools can work for everyone.