EyeSee

Twitter has a few memes/games and one of them is the popular #FollowFriday. So on Friday you will see Tweets ending with #FollowFriday.

The rules are simple

1. On Friday

2. Suggest interesting Twitter users to follow

3.  @<twitter id> … #FollowFriday

It’s that simple. The idea behind this is to promote users that you find interesting.

Your followers or anyone checking the Everyone updates will see this Tweet.

It all got started with one simple tweet from Micha Baldwin…

With a suggestion from Mykl Roventine…

And it went wild….

Today FollowFriday is still here and yes there is an official website for it, FollowFriday.com. In addition to this there is

@FOLLOWfriday , @FollowFridays, @

Good old twitter search

Top Follow Friday

Tweeple Rank

Follow Friday Stats

Trend details

FolowFriday Tweeps

TwitScoop

Twitter Tag Project

So next time it’s Friday, recommend someone. Check out the above sites to find interesting people to follow.

What makes a social network great asides from the obvious are the little touches that are added to make updating you status easy. In the age of less is more it’s nice to have these add-ons.

Ok I am going to cut to the chase, it’s the @mentions or new tagging feature from Facebook. If you are a regular Twitter user you are very familiar with the @username, as a way of replying to the people you are having a conversation with.

This feature is somewhat similar to Twitter however it’s not only user name based but contextual as well. Here’s an example of what I am talking about. Say I want to @ a particular friend who’s name begins with A.

Click on the wall tab and type the @ followed by the word you want to use, in this case it’s @a.

A drop down window will be opened with all the relevant info. related to a.  i.e. Pages, groups, events etc.. that contain a. Keep typing the rest of the word until you find the relevant item.

Click on the item. There you have it. It’s very easy.

So if you have been to an event and want to comment on it use the @mentions feature. If you have a comment for a number of friends then this is a great feature to use as it saves you writing on multiple walls at the same time.

Go ahead it and get @crazy in Facebook.

Facebook now has something called Facebook Lite. The way to access this is by clicking on the linkhttp://lite.facebook.com/.

It’s certainly a work in progress however it’s quite a calming feeling when you use this as most of the applications, updates, requests etc. are not there. All the bells and whistles have been stripped out. So if you like this then use it.

Here’s what it looks like so far.

Top menu bar for Lite has the Profile, Events, Inbox, Settings, Logout and Search.

Compared to the regular Facebook which has Home, Profile, Frneids, Inbox, UserName, Settings, Logoug and Search.

The top bar for Lite has Write, Post Photos, Post Video.

Compared to the regular Facebook which has Wall, Info, Photos, Boxes, Video, Yearbook, + (for additional tabs)

The Lite side bar looks like this.

There is an Ad asking you to invite 2 other friends to try it out.

There are no menu items at the bottom, and all the other side bar stuff is gone.

So why a Facebook and a Facebook Lite? Time will tell as to where they want to go with this. Till then if you find it all too confusing then use Facebook Lite.

I have a gravatar, yeah. A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar which further means that it’s an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you participate online. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs, forums etc..

So with this in mind I have signed up on Gravatar.

The big question in my mind is not that I have a gravatar how does my avatar appear on other blogs, forums, sites etc. It’s through the use of the gravatar plugins on the site. Some of the plugins are for Wordpress, Joomla, Geeklog and more.

I signed up and uploaded a number of pictures to be used as my gravatar. One is the company logo and some pictures of me.

Allan Isfan is the CEO of FaveQuest and I have had the pleasure of having many engaging discussions with him over the past year or so. He has a tonne of great ideas, energy and a great contributer to the start-up community in Ottawa.

I have heard a lot about this particular project and today is very exciting as FaveQuest has just launched their latest social media application, the Bluesfest View Tube.

“The Bluesfest ViewTube consists of three components

1) music videos for nearly all acts (pulled from youtube)
2) a personal calendar (with reminders)
3) ability to invite friends

There are two versions

1) web extension to Bluesfest website (simple registration using your email)

2) Facebook application”

The idea is to give the smaller acts at the bluesfest more attention, which is awesome for their fans. The cool part is that this View Tube is for the fans so if you have opinions on what features you would like to his application do give FaveQuest your input.

Congratulations Allan.

The King of Twitter is apparently Ashton Kutcher according to Oprah Winfrey. He is on Oprah Live today if you want to get the scoop.

A few months ago I started following him to learn how celebrities are using Twitter. Since the mainstream media has been writing about this face, his followers have increased and so have other celebrities joining Twitter.

What makes this attractive to their fans is the fact that they get the inside scoop on what’s going on from the celebrities themselves. The paparattzzi might just go out of business. That’s wishful thinking.

A lot of people say that they don’t what to know who had coffee or what they eat for breakfast. Well if you are a celebrity then your fans definitely want to know this kind of stuff. It’s turning out to be a great way to promote yourself and celebrities are capitalizing on this to create their own perception of themselves and one that is different from the tabloids.

For all you celebrity obsessed there is try out Celebwitter, they track all the celebs on Twitter. Apparently Ashton go 1Million followers before CNN did!

It now turns out that Oprah is not only on Facebook but on Twitter. Maybe I will DM her, do you think she will respond?

I poked around on facebook’s Marketplace and found something really interesting.  facebook Marketplace is the equivalent of Kijiji or Craig’s list with a little twist.It’s the place to buy, sell and give things to people YOU KNOW.

It is powered by Oodle,  more listings, smarter classifieds.

It’s got the usual UI similarities like box to post whatever is for sale.

There is a Browse section for the existing categories.

Recent Listings or View all listings.

There are a number of other tabs for

• Selling it
• Sell for a cause
• Give it away
• Ask for it

Pretty easy to use and navigate around with the typical social network feel to it.

On the right hand side there are 2 columns, one for the usual facebook ads. The other column caught my attention.

Want to see your cause featured? Contact us today.  Clicking on this resulted in another form.

It looks like a pretty standard facebook email form, right? Looking for the fine print, this is what I found.

If you send Matthew Dearborn a message, you will give him permission to view your list of friends, as well as you Basic, Work and Education info. for one month.

Hmm not sure who Matthew Dearborn is and not sure how my friends feel about giving this individual access to my friends list and other information.

This now brings up the privacy dillema.  If you are one of those people that are very open is a social network this would not bother you.  However what if you are one of those people that value your privacy and have the privacy settings activated as per your preference for various people in your network.  This might be a bit bothersome.

What are your thoughts on this?

This afternoon I was in the middle of an interactive session and was having trouble with updates on the Virtual EyeSee Facebook Page. During that time I had noticed a few tweets about changes coming to the Facebook Pages.

So here’s the scoop on the changes.

In the past it looked like this

It now looks like this.

The new UI looks very much like a profile but it’s for a business.

The Facebook Pages is great for leveraging the real connections between friends on Facebook. The Fans become brand advocates. The posts on the Page will now appear in News Feeds of fans thus making it more powerful.

There will be multiple customizable tabs. This looks like it could be a great feature.

Enhanced Wall

The wall now has the same functionality as that of a profile wall. In the past when something was posted on the wall it did not appear in the news feeds of the fan unless you manually activated this capability.

Update and Share

Fans can get updates on statuses

Tabbed Structure

This looks like a great feature as it is easier to keep info categorized and organized.  Core applications are now available like Events, Reviews and Discussions.

Like the profiles, third party appliations can be developed for the pages.

This is a really cool feature. Each tab is it’s own URL which means that for Facebook ads or of-site promotion you can now have your landing page so to speak.

A default tab can be set for users who aren’t yet Fans who navigate to the page from within Facebook.

Measuring Engagement and Interaction

The Insights took will now include new data on Fans’ engagement with posts from the Page. The number of comments made by Fans and how many people view your page in News Feeds.

There are more great features and the setup is very simple.

The key difference is that you can now customize the page to certain landing pages for various users thus customizing the experience. The best part is that there are better measurement tools.

January 20th 2009 is a historical day, it’s the inauguration of President Barack Obama.  People showed up in record numbers and had to be turned away, people watched the coverage through whatever media was available to them. There is a lot of excitement at a global level.

True to his word his team have worked non stop since the election to transition his new media strategy and develop it into that of a New Media President.

Barack Obama.com is still alive and has regular updates.  It’s unclear as to the future of that site.  Post election there was Change.gov that gave regular updates on the road to the White House.  He did promise to open the government up and engage the citizens which has resulted in the  WhiteHouse.gov having a makeover and this  is very exciting.

The White House Blog will serve as one of the communications vehicles so to speak.  Macon Phillips is the Director of New Media for the White House.  The Blog post Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov outlines the future of this site. It reminds people to keep tabs via the RSS feed and sign up for email updates.

They promise transparency by publication of proclamations and executive orders made public via this site.

In keeping with his promise to take the opinion of the people into the decision making process all non-emergency legislation will be available on the website for five days.  This will give everyone enough time to send in their opinions before the President signs off on them.   In the past people have been very disgruntled with politicians in general partly due to their furstration over the lack of their input into the decision making process.  In other words open sourced democracy.

With an unlimited budget you can have a very solid web and social media strategy.  Here is an analysis of one of the many social networks and how it was customized towards the audience on this site.

Facebook Applications

There were many Facebook applications e.g. Barack Obama supporters, Barack Obama for President, Barack Obama fan, Barack Obama – Yes, We Can, Obamagrams,Obamarama …..  Some were developed by his campaign team and the rest by others because they have a lot of time on their hands.

A custom FB application called Obama was created.  This application lets you share the news items, blog posts, speeches, videos that most inspire you to support Barack Obama.

The official facebook page has the Obama application button installed with the call to action button”find out where to vote now”.  It also offered favorite stories and videos targeted at this audience.

Facebook Page

Numerous facebook pages all linked together.  His official page had 3,667,117 supporters.  So every time any information was listed here it was easily accessible to 3 million people!!!

Favorite Pages

His team was very open to various groups taking his logo and adapting it towards their needs.  These special interest groups were linked to his Facebook Page via the Favorite Pages option thus providing one stop shopping.

YouTube Box

This application posted the relevant videos fromYouTube here.  Not all videos where here but targeted videos by his team.

Notes

Updates on where Obama was going to be on various TV shows, venus etc..updates on issues, policies, guest posts, inspirational posts to raise further funds.  Fun items like update your profile pictures.

On voting day a link to the polling application was posted here.

Photos

Numerous photo albums highlighting not only his personal life but his campaign trail starting in Springfield.  This is well done as it shows his policital side as well as his more human side.

Now who’s not gonna love this…  check out the comments….

Posted Items

Before his Election Night speech, Barack sent out a message to his supporters.

“I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign — every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign. We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing…

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack”

If you are just an ordinary citizen the chances of the President elect sending a personal note are close to none.  With his FB channel he was able to thank everyone for voting for him.

Supporters

Over 3 million supporters on facebook alone!!!!  All these people gave their feedback, posted videos, photos etc…

Events

Select events were posted here, not a whole lot but enough to generate interest.

His online presence  was similar in the other social networking sites with targeted messages going out in these channels.  This form of communication where the barriers are broken down and the average joe can provide their feedback is very powerful.

These various sites are still being used my his team during the transition and it remains to be seen how they will morph as he takes office soon.

I have mixed feelings about this, on the one hand I am thrilled about thise social media channels.  On the flip side I have a bit of concern that they could be used to push his agenda.  So the other politicians and special interest groups should take the time to also participate in this space so that the American people are getting a well rounded picture and not that of a sole individual.