Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

  • Copywriting
    • Content Marketing
    • SEO
  • About
  • Contact

How To Break a Social Network

February 3, 2010 by Ian 6 Comments

broken glass 2 on FlickrI’ve had to reconsider how I use social networks lately, because I think some of the people who are connecting with me are doing it wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making connections. I’ve met some very interesting people mostly through Twitter and blogs. In some instances, this is clearly fanboy level connection – I’ve subscribed, commented without expectation of a response, followed them on twitter and so on. In other instances, I’ve made new contacts through Facebook and even instant message – which are, or at least have been, my favoured “personal” connection methods.

But some of this needs to change. I need a real sense of home base. I need to shore up the connections I’ve made with meaningful contact.

I’ve also been using Foursquare lately. I check in daily at my workplace, in my mall, at the coffee shops I frequent when I go there. I’m mayor of a couple of places, but I’m by no means prolific. I’ve got a few friends – for some reason, Robert Scoble and Julien Smith even clicked the “accept friend” button, which is cool because I like putting a diverse range of information (not just a volume of information) to the people who intrigue me. I’ve also got a number of local friends on there. But then there are the strangers.

I got a request from a former colleague. Which was neat. But when he checked into my store, I popped my head up and said hello… And he didn’t have any idea who I was. Didn’t have as sharp a memory for people as I do, it turns out.cHow useful is this service, really, if you don’t have ducks in a row enough to recognise someone you used to work with, when you had the presense of spam enough to request they add you on a social network?

Even better was getting a request from Egor Lavrov, an apparent entrepreneur (who I had never hard of before) out of Florida and the Dominican Republic. I hit accept, because I still haven’t decided how I’m using the service, then checked out Egor’s profile, and promptly gagged. The guy has easily a hundred friends. How, in a location-based game/network, are you supposed to keep up with that many people? Especially with people jockeying for points and cluttering the streams? He’s forever checking in and is ALWAYS off the grid! What’s the point of doing this, convincing that many people to track you, and then never giving them any information to work with?

Now note, I’ve got Scoble and Julien, and Dave Peck was actually my first friend on Foursquare (even though I’ve never connected with him anywhere else), so I can’t really speak to diversity of location. But I do have to wonder if people are paying attention to the reasons WHY you friend someone on Foursquare?

Who might you want to follow on 4sq or Gowalla? If you’re on a location-based service, you likely should be friending people you have a chance of meeting, or at least want to keep track of at least a little. Scoble travels, Julien speaks. I track them because I may miss an announcement of where they’re doing their public work – which I’m interested in. My friends, I like to track for obvious reasons. But seriously, why am I going to friend a thousand people there? Friending metrics are useless on location networks. Try again.

How do you filter on LinkedIn? I don’t use LinkedIn thoroughly yet because I’m not that active doing events and outside client work for my job yet. I have it, it’s a semi-static living resume. But I sort of agree with Chris Brogan here, that it’s not a get-more-contacts game. The more accurately you can make your contact list reflect your working life, the better off you’re likely to be. If you want to find me on LinkedIn, go ahead – but it would help your case if you want me to guest post or contribute to your efforts somehow. I will trust me. I love to help. It’s what I do for a living.

Who should you friend on Facebook? Whoever you want. Friending metrics are useless on Facebook, it’s not a collector’s game, but thankfully the platform is flexible enough that whether you’re going for a collection of loose friends, or a tight-knit group of really core buds, it will work for you. I like Facebook. Actually, a lot, much as I prefer Twitter for daily entertainment value lately. If you’d like to connect on Facebook, be my guest – but be warned, it’s filled mostly with useless trivia and the flack that I don’t push out in a more professional demeanour.

Which leaves the biggest contender: Twitter. Praise Be The Tweet. There are a lot of theories on what’s effective on Twitter, but the simple truth is that it’s a very popular, and thus powerful, engine for putting yourself in front of whoever you want in a really simple, expressed way. It’s great for linking, initial contact, on the fly public conversation, and big self-promotional pushes. Collect people, keep it small, follow no one but track a bunch of lists – the possibilities are so flexible that, as much as the followers number still matters to some people, it has no attachment to how you follow, who you follow, or how you interact. If you’re not following me on Twitter already, you’re not one of the cool kids – but it’s not hard to get in, because I have no say in it. Say hello!

So how do you do it totally wrong?

Lots of people will argue with me about it even being possible to use a service wrong, but let me explain.

When I see someone on Foursquare behaving in a way that works better on Twitter, that’s broken. It’s not about behaviour, so much as it is about approach. The language of location networks is locality. The language of LinkedIn is reference and relevance. The language of Twitter and, to an extent Facebook, is conversation. You can’t have a conversation with me on Foursquare – so that fails. You can’t assume relevance on Twitter without digging far further than the profile page, so the LinkedIn approach is of limited use.

At the end of the day if you really want to break a social network, just treat it like the other networks you’re already on.

Photo by Nesster.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogs, connection, Facebook, foursquare, social-networks, twitter, you're doing it wrong

What To Expect Of Me In The Coming Year

December 28, 2009 by Ian 12 Comments

I have this innate prejudice against best of lists. Somehow, rounding up the best of the previous year, decade, century, whatever – it seems a bit like planning for yesterday. Especially with the trouble we seem to be having moving with the pace of a technologically enabled culture, I’d prefer to break the old forms and do some declaration for the next cycle.

I’m not into making resolutions – they’ve never worked. Everything I’ve ever quit, I did as it was needed rather than at an arbitrary date. Every project I’ve ever started has begun when its time came, rather than at the beginning of a given quarter. So, with that aside, here are some things you can expect to see me look toward in 2010.

I’m going to be connecting with people. I spend a lot of time mentioning, linking, drawing riffs from others. If we’ve already got some kind of connection (even if it’s just trading blog comments) expect me to try to expand on that. If all I’ve done is retweet you, expect some comments and so on.

I’m launching a few new projects. In the beginning of February (the 2nd, to be specific) I’m launching an online novel called The Dowager Shadow. Its story has been a work in progress for almost six years, but the principal writing is still going on. It’l be an interesting journey. I also may be reworking and relaunching Why, Read The Manual! – but we’ll see about that one. Its final form has yet to be decided, and I may be asking for collaboration from some of the people I’ve been connecting with over the past year.

The focus of this blog will narrow. Like any good blogger, I’m eventually choosing my spin. I’m well aware I can get rather random sometimes – it’s not been the best for my traffic. I’ve been looking over the posts that have caused the most stir (cough-anonymity-cough) or illicited the highest number of comments (hack-twilight-hack). Naturally, I don’t want to be so easy to pigeon-hole as allowing myself to be defined as “the digital manners guy” but there are definitely benefits to picking your angle. I can’t say with finality what mine is. Nor do I want to make the decision final. But it’ll get easier to see what I’m writing about s the theme becomes visible.

In any case, the point of this exercise is to make sure you know I’m sticking around. I’ve a lot of work to do, and a lot of it relates directly to my continued work here. The blog itself is slated for a total redesign beginning in January, so expect some landscape changes unless you’re using Google Reader or some such. I promise; no Thesis. The new theme will be one hundred percent Unspeakable Media faire, I’m still too cheap to spend anything but my time on design.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: best of, Blogging, connection, dowager shadow, plans, why read the manual

Categories

  • Announcements
    • Event Notices
  • Blog
  • Communication
  • Content Strategy
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Personal
  • Reviews
  • Social Media
  • Technology

Archive

  • January 2016
  • June 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • July 2008
  • February 2004
  • Copywriting
  • Blog
  • Reading Lists
  • Colophon

© Copyright 2023 Ian M Rountree · All Rights Reserved