A digital girl, the blog. By Julia Roy

Let's Fix #followfriday Please

I remember when Follow Friday (aka #followfriday) first started making its way around Twitter in January by @micah (Thanks to the Twitterers today for helping me remember it was Micah Baldwin). I thought it was a great idea at the time, as it is often hard to understand where you need to go to find new valuable people to follow on Twitter. If I really enjoy following X Twitterer and X Twitterer suggests I follow Y&Z Twitterer, I just might listen and click through and check 'em out. 

It is no question that Follow Friday's popularity has exploded and just continues to grow, but my feelings toward it have changed. I have a very hard time understanding its value anymore. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, Twitter is growing rapidly and there is a lot more noise than there was even merely 5 months back when Follow Friday started. Secondly, now with Twitter auto follow friday bots from services like TwitterMass and TweetLater most of these "recommendation" tweets are just randomized spam.

As I see it, the #followfriday hashtag has spread so quickly because it's a great way to say "Hey everyone, these are some of my favorite people on Twitter!" But now with the Twitter community growing so fast, people's following is growing with it and we have to sift through the noise in order to find people of real value to follow. So now, simply listing your favorite Twitterers in tweet on Friday's, is not very helpful.

The solution? Well, I know that others on Twitter have been suggesting this development as well, but #followfriday needs to evolve in a way where on Friday everyone suggests a few people they like to follow and WHY. These can be multiple tweets, but the most important thing is including the context in which you are suggesting someone to follow.

If you want to understand where my frustration with #followfriday is coming from, check out my TweetDeck on Fridays. I should be flattered, but I just get annoyed because on Friday's I have a hard time seeing real @ conversations because of all the #followfriday tweets coming in. *sigh*

Paramount Star Trek Outreach FAIL

I have been mulling over whether or not I should blog about a disappointing experience I had with Paramount a few weeks back. But I think there is a lesson to be learned here about the right and wrong way to conduct social outreach, so I am going to lay out what happened.

Here's the story. Below is an email I received the evening of May 4th from interns at Paramount Field Marketing and Promotions department:

So I of course get REALLY REALLY FREAKIN' EXCITED and email everyone at the Undercurrent office, close friends and start Tweeting like crazy. Then I get a follow up email the next day: 

To say the least, I was so disappointed as were the friends and digerati's I contacted to go with me. Paramount's half-assed efforts to do something special for Twitter and Facebook-ers is best classified as a "Social Media" Outreach FAIL. 

The Facebook "Friend" Predicament

I've kept my Facebook profile public to everyone, meaning that someone does not need to add me as a friend to browse my bio, status updates, pictures, etc. I've taken this approach because I never joined Facebook in college (truth be told - I pretty much boycotted FB when I was in school, ha!) and therefore I never have used FB to post private "for friends only" content. Facebook has always been (for me) a good place to connect with people that I would otherwise not been able to and visa versa. You can learn A LOT about someone just by clicking around on their Facebook profile. ;)

However, my friend-all/accept-all strategy has opened the door to having A LOT of Facebook "friendships" with people I don't really know.

As of today, I have about 1,900 Facebook friends. Of those friends, approximately 500 of those are people I actually know in real life - either intimately or through business connections - but the remaining 1,40o are people I have never met nor know much about.

And lately, the number of new friend invitations I've been getting is alarming. Who are these people? I understand that Facebook has been growing (especially with people 35-65) so I attribute a lot of new friend requests to newbies that are just trying to make friends, learn what Facebook is all about and start using it to help network themselves in a meaningful way (hopefully).

The problem I am facing is, as my not-so-real friend count grows, my Facebook Wall is looking more and more like a MySpace wall. Random messages like "check out my website" and "omg ur so hot, kasdf;lk" are more common now than not and it is starting to really annoy me.

My solution for now is to just delete those messages from my FB Wall as I get them, so that the important content and messages posted by my real-life friends and myself are not diluted by the rambling nonsense of people I have friended, but who do not really understand how to operate in Facebook.

I also use the "add friend to list" option when accepting a friend request to categorize new friends into buckets  - like NYC, High School, Colleague, Twitter, etc - which allows me to limit certain buckets to have less access to particular parts of my profile than others. Perhaps people I don't know I should not be allowed write on my wall. Oh that just kinda makes me sad though.

What should I do? Stop friending people I don't know? Is that the only solution? It might be. 

Don't Be an Idiot on the Social Web

The social web can be a dangerous place. Why? Because as soon as one feels comfortable within their own social networking space - to share whatever they are thinking with their "friends," as soon as they think it  - it easily becomes a place where one can ruin their own reputation.

I don't quite understand what @theconnor (the potential Cisco employee) and @CV31 (the Milwaukee Bucks' forward Charlie Villanueva) were thinking when they posted not-so-thought-through tweets to their Twitter accounts.

Although @theconnor was a much worse offender than @CV31 - they both should have considered who could be listening and the possible repercussions of their statements BEFORE they posted these messages to their public Twitter accounts:

@theconners: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

@CV31: "In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up."

Come on people!?!?!?! Twitter is a great place to talk about what you are thinking and what you are doing, but when your thoughts are really inappropriate and/or when you are currently working on something that requires a lot focus and concentration... please try to hold back from posting real-time updates to Twitter.

K, THX, BAI.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Friending on Facebook

It is too common that I get into the conversation about how to use Facebook to network with people in and around your industry. It is also too common that my non-digital friends from college and elsewhere tell me that they will never friend anyone on Facebook that they don't already know.  I understand that people want to protect themselves and the content within their profile, but since Facebook's release of the "List" feature a while back, I don't accept that "but I don't really know them" answer anymore.

Using Facebook's "Friend Lists" feature, you can accept "random" friend requests and put them in different buckets, which Facebook calls lists. The benefits of adding friends to lists is two-fold:

1. You can set limited profile access to all a lists members
2. You can message all the people in a list at once.

Why not accept those "random" and "not sure if I know this person" friend requests and put them into different lists that have limited access to your profile. Why not? Who knows who the strange person friending you is, but they could be your next employer, or the person who is going to make you famous (somehow.)

P.S. To control privacy setting for individual "Lists":

1. Go to Privacy Settings
2. Click on the privacy setting of a category like "basic info"
3. Select "Customize"
4. Type the name of the Friends List into the "Execpt These People" box.

Your Tax Dollars

Everyone who gets a paycheck is aware that the government takes money from our salary in the form of taxes. With the recent Bailout, we are all asking, why do I have to pay?  And this question is yet another REASON TO VOTE this year, so if you have not registered, do so NOW!

With that in mind, I came across and tweeted about the USATaxDollar.com site yesterday.  This is a site that tells you how much and where your tax dollars are going. I get my bi-weekly check directly deposited into my bank account, so I don't regularly look at the amount of money deducted. I was kinda shocked when I went to the site, entered my salary and saw the breakdown of how much money I pay in taxes.  It showed me where my money was going and what percentage was going where.

This site was very enlightening for me. Yet another compelling reason to vote.

Rock the Vote

People of the internet, please register to vote. Some registration deadlines are this Saturday and if you forget to register, you can't vote and that sucks big time.

The Rock the Vote website makes it really easy and sexy to register. Get ready for registration sexytime. I actually tried to register at the proper City of New York Board of Elections website, but, for whatever reason, I had a hard time figuring out how to print the proper form. Not to mention the site is boring and basic, and did not get me excited about registering. It actually made me more frustrated about registering.

The Rock the Vote website on the other hand is fun and engaging and provides numerous ways to share with friends and spread the "register now" love.

12seconds and (out)Following the Founder

I was sent an alpha invitation to 12seconds yesterday, by fellow digerati on the West Coast, Giannii. *secret fist pound*

From what I've seen so far, 12seconds is a small, but growing web community of spontaneous conversation. Users' interact with each other through recording and sharing short video clips, which are (of course) limited to exactly 12 seconds in length.  It seems the majority of the current users are using the service in conjunction with Twitter, which is the same way Seesmic positioned itself when it got started.

I don't think it's like Seesmic at all though; it's actually more like Twitter. 12seconds and Twitter have the same essentials: an interconnected web of short conversations, restricted in length but not scope.

I think 12seconds will stick around for a while, and possibly get Twitter's attention, and even find themselves bought by them, possibly. Anything is possible now with Twitter (finally) getting ambitious with Twitter Election.

I Want More Followers than Sol Lipman
I've been feeling competitive these days (well, it's actually more like a constant and persistent feeling that I could take on the world with just my Macbook.) With that in mind, I think I bet I could get more followers than Sol Lipman, the founder of 12seconds, by Saturday afternoon. Yep, I'm breaking it down like that and I only have 4 days to do it. As of right now, Sol has 396 followers, and I have until Saturday at 4pm to surpass that. Note to self: Get head start at "eating your own words," on Oct 4th @ 3:45pm.

This will sure be a test of my reputable "mad networking skillz." Given the number of people I have to connect with (396+), I suspect I will be participating in lots of 12-second-long conversations between now and Saturday. I better get started.... ;)

OMG, WTF on 12seconds.tv
Help Me! Follow me on 12seconds!

Google Search and CERN

Google never ceases to amaze me at how cool they can be with their search page. So timely; so buzzworthy. Science geeks everywhere rejoice.

YouTube User Support

I find it totally unacceptable that YouTube make users wander through a complicated maze to access YouTube staff. Maybe I am losing my mind, but I could not find a contact form or email address anywhere on in their Help Center. I finally left YouTube and poked around Google for the answer. I found and email address on the Get Satisfaction YouTube discussion boards; but I should have been able to easily get the info from YouTube.

Maybe you all can help me? The YouTube user who has "juliaroy" has not signed into her account for 1 year. I have contacted her, but I am going to assume she will not respond, unless she has email notifications for direct messages. Anyways, I would like to know if there is any way possible I could get that username from her. I spend a lot of time in YouTube for clients, and I feel somewhat empowered to ask if they will make it available for me.

Funeral Livecasting

The Downard Funeral home in Pocatello, Idaho has started livecasting its funeral processions. They set up a camera to laptop and broadcast live on the internet. Family members are sent a link and password via email and can enter the password protected site to watch the funeral procession. It is then available for 90 days afterward, during which viewers can request a DVD copy.

Kinda creepy, but an innovative idea. Instead of taking off work to morn the dead, you can pay your respects through your computer, from the comfort of your office chair. 

AIM and GTalk Chatting

I make my AIM and GTalk usernames available for anyone to get on practically all my sites and social profiles. I make it as easy as possible for anyone who is interested to contact me, whether that be via email, twitter, chat, facebook, etc. I accept all Facebook friend invites, LinkedIn requests, Twitter followers, (although I have behind on keeping up with following everyone back on twitter), etc. Basically if you want to connect, I'm down to chat and message back and forth. Always keeping the conversation going.

However, I have to put my foot down and put a stop to the AIM maddness.  I have found recently that I am chatting with a lot of people I don't even know on AIM. Great, fun conversations, but it is too time consuming. Already being distracted by conversations on Twitter, Facebook and my blog are enough.  I think I am going to have to stay logged off of AIM for most of the day and only keep open Bonjour to chat with people in the office. I'll jump on AIM when I know I have some time to chat, otherwise peeps are going to have to reach me by Direct Messaging me on Twitter or Facebook, or of course, sending me an email.

Removing iPhone Apps

I am only keeping three applications on my iPhone- Yelp, Tetris and Pandora -and the rest I have removed from my phone. Not because I don't like them or find them useful, but because they make even the simplest tasks like texting and emailing really slow to load and I've been having serious keyboard slowdown. When opening my texts, I wait 20 seconds for my texts to be visible; i wait up to 30 seconds sometimes for the keyboard to catch up to my fingers. I never had these problems before. I also found the apps themselves are kinda crappy and often take forever to load, if they'd even load at all.

To keep my word, below is a critique of all the apps I talked about in my previous post. Here is my official MonkeyButt list for iApps^sm (title graciously suggested by THE Paisano, *hat tip.*)

Typepad: I cannot get into blogging from my mobile phone. A few months back Typepad launched improved mobile blogging features and although this app is a great addition, I don't like blogging from my phone. I am too slow typing on my iPhone and I am unable to edit and add images/multimedia to the post with the ease that I can when blogging from my laptop.

AIM: Didn't work at all. Could not even get it to load, at all. This was the first app I deleted, so moving on....

MoPhoto: To be honest, I never even opened this app. Flickr makes posting photos from my phone to my Flickr account incredibly easy. I email photos from my phone using my designated Flickr email. I never even gave this app a chance.

SunCompass: I wanted this to work so bad. I use Hopstop a lot for getting around NYC and the directions always say "go north" or "head south," and I never have any clue which way to turn. To my disappointment, this app did not work for me. It took way too long for the app to figure out which way is which.

Jamd: As much as I wanted to use this to keep up with pop culture/celebrity news, it seems I just don't care enough about the world of glamour to use it.

Bank of America: I like this app a lot, but I've always been able to easily access my account on the BOA website via my iPhone browser. I removed it because my iPhone is so slow now with these apps, so if I don't need it or love it, it's gone.

New York Times: Who am I kidding, I don't read news on the go, on my iPhone, ever. The only time I want to read news on phone- is on the Subway, which is impossible because no phone service underground. (So, while in transit, I read fiction bestsellers instead.)

Google: This app loads but then freezes and does not allow me to enter any text for at least 90 seconds. I can't wait that long. I am actually thinking I might try to keep this one, I do like using it better than the iPhone Safari browser.

Jott: Jott is a great organization and voice-to-text service, that I never fully got into. Thought I'd give it another whirl, but I quickly realized it was redundant as I am using a great task/note organization service at work already.

Facebook New Profile Design

I am not sure  how I feel about the new look and feel of Facebook. I am a HUGE fan of tabbed browsing, as anyone I work with can attest to the endless number of tabs I have open at any given moment, but I liked how the old Facebook profile lived on one page. It may be technically better, but it will definitely take some time to get used to.

Twitter Rumors

I follow close to 3,000 people on Twitter and am witness to all types of crazy conversations, shared thoughts and heated debates. People find answers, love, new jobs and invaluable advice on Twitter.  At the same time - hundreds of rumors are started, secrets are told, and news stories are leaked everyday on Twitter, making it the place to find and debate the best gossip around.

I was sucked into a twitter rumor today. It was tweeted and I contemplated it, questioned it with my followers and searched Google to find the truth. After my investigation, I am pleased to Announce to the World that Jared Fogel, Subway's legendary spokesman, is not, in fact, dead. I was so sad this morning when I was unsure, but now I am sure -- Jared is still alive not only in our hearts, but also on this earth. Hooray!

I would love to know, how many rumors are started, debated and killed on Twitter daily. The birth and lifecycle of twumors (twitterrumors) is fast paced, and well nutured by all of us who participate. There are pages of twitter search results from today alone, with people announcing, denouncing and debating Jared's death. 

I am also quite interested to know who is behind jaredremembered.com. Subway and its agencies? Some random dude in San Diego? Apparently, the rumor was debated as early as August of last year. And where are Jared's fans and supporters defending his life? Long live Jared! In any case, hat tip to the mastermind(s) - you got me.