Intro to Online Social Networking

Interview with Mums in Control magazine – out this summer. MIC is a fast growing network of mums in business or mumpreneurs. A fast-growing phenomenon I am part of, and keen to support. Not sure about the “in control” bit, but hopefully in balance more often than not.

Mothers are increasingly fed up with jobs that do not allow them to spend enough time with their children. So instead, they are starting their own businesses. The number of women working for themselves has leapt by nearly 20% since 2000, according to official figures, and now tops a million.

And an opinion poll commissioned by the government shows that the most significant factor in the increase is a desire among women for a better balance between work and family life.”

From BBC News

Clarification: my services extend beyond online social networking. See here for more.

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Making Social Networks Your Business…

by Miranda Glover

The social web changes the marketing game by making it participative. LIBBY DAVY, inspirational social web expert, artist and mother, offers insight into becoming SMART (specific, measurable, achieveable, realistic and timely) when marketing your business.

Read this article carefully, it’s the new holy grail for all aspiring mumpreneurs…

An Australian communications and PR specialist with an engaging smile, Libby Davy now lives with her technology-savvy husband, young daughter and dog, in Brighton, West Sussex. She’s a web champion with a social conscience, who is hugely enthusiastic about the way women use the internet today. “We are natural social animals,” she explains, “Women love to communicate, to collaborate, to create connections. The internet’s our natural home.”

A few years ago, terms like ‘googling’ and ‘surfing’ may have felt alien, but today we all do these things with the same ease as hanging out the washing. The web’s become invaluable and not just for doing the supermarket shopping. We’re also communicating with old friends and ex-colleagues and keeping an eye on our kids through the social websites they use, like Bebo and Facebook, too. Oh! and of course some of us are using it for dating, as well. Even so, are we really taking full advantage of the internet’s social dimension to support our business needs? Libby shakes her head; clearly thinks not.

She and her husband run a technology company called, Nodestone, which combines middleware development (her husband’s bit and a techy term you don’t need to understand) with a social networking consultancy (the bit we are interested in). Through it, Libby runs workshops to explain how the web is a social network that enables you to do far more than keep in touch with your mates. Whilst traditional media can still be useful for promoting your business, the web is SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). Libby encourages us to, “Try not to fear the jargon. There are a few new terms worth understanding, as they will give you confidence to harness all the values the web has to offer.”

She points me to her website for some clear advice. It tells me that “vast numbers of people are using blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites as important marketing and engagement tools.” Libby explains further, “Building your buzz in these spaces is a good way to find your market. Getting the right bloggers to write about your activities (blog outreach) is also a good way to reach interested people.”

These activities will help build traffic to your business’s website. This is critical if you want to raise your search rankings. (e.g when someone keys your business type into google or Yahoo search your company to come up towards the top of the results). Libby explains that to achieve this, “exchange links with relevant blogs and other sites, and remember that a personal request works best. A good way to start is by commenting on other blogs that are writing about your topics. It’s also a good idea to have a blog as part of your site; it’s an easy way to keep the content fresh and the site alive.”

You can use social networks to build a list of ‘friends’ who you can message in a similar way to email and so promote your website. Social networks also have a viral aspect where people sign-up to your cause because they’ve seen it appear in a friend’s newsfeed or on their profile. You can make it easy to sign up by adding links to your Facebook, Myspace, Bebo or other social networking profiles on to your website homepage.

“Social networks work best when you put a lot of time into them, sending messages, responding to friend requests, commenting on other people’s profiles,” Libby warns. “But the results can be really worthwhile. They are informal social spaces, so the more personal and friendly you can be, the better. People in social networks will tend to ignore corporate communications.”

She advises that you think carefully about who you are trying to attract using social networking sites, in some societies they are mostly used by a younger audience, however they are increasingly gaining popularity with different communities.

Twitter is the most recent term on everyone’s lips, since Barack Obama used it so successfully for his presidential campaign.

“It’s hard to describe Twitter well,” laughs Libby, “Except as a mixture of micro-blogging (160 characters per entry as in mobile phone text messages) and social networking. It works across the web and with mobile phones and feels ‘live’.”

People are using Twitter to share interesting content, especially to respond to things that are happening at that moment or to share snippets of and links to interesting articles and blog posts.

Evaluation

I ask her how you can you see if all your social marketing is working?

“A simple tool you can use for free is Google Alerts,” she says. “You can set this up through going to the main google website and specifying which key words you want it to alert you about when they are used on a website. Google Alerts then emails you when these keywords are mentioned in online media and blogs.”

“The mantra of online marketing is ‘measure everything’. For your site, the main tool will probably be Google Analytics, it’s free and provides a lot of detail on your website statistics; who’s using your site, where they are coming from to reach your site and what they are looking at. For your social networks you’ll largely be relying on the stats you can get from them, such as number of friends, number of comments, and number of video views. The web promises what traditional PR & marketing never could – the possibility of measuring engagement.”

The social web changes the whole marketing game by making it participative. You don’t just want to get people interested, you want to get them involved. Encourage people to bookmark your site in social bookmarking services like Delicious and always encourage friends and supporters of your initiative to and encourage your friends to promote your cause.”

With this Libby takes a breath. “There’s so much more to say,” she laughs, “but perhaps this is enough for one day. “

10 new web terms your business should know….

Blog

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse time order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject; some function as more personal online diaries. Blog software (eg. Wordpress) is often used to build websites for organisations now, as it is easy and free to use.

Syndication

Syndication means that anyone can subscribe to your blog and receive automatic notification that it has been updated. It uses RSS feeds.

RSS

Really Simple Syndication is a technology that allows Internet users to receive ongoing, constantly updated information from many sources through a simple reader or aggregator (eg. Google Reader). This is supplied through an “RSS feed” that users can subscribe to.

Aggregator

A feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply as an aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Social bookmarking

The ability to save and categorise a personal collection of bookmarks through services such as Delicious and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others.

Web rings

A group of websites with a common theme, built in a loop, allowing a surfer easy access to subsequent sites in the ring by clicking on links. There are thousands of web rings around in all sorts of categories and issues.

Social networking

A broad class of websites and services that allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, as well as meet people with similar interests or hobbies. Popular examples include MySpace, Facebook, Linked In. Even photo sharing websites like Flickr have become places for social networking through shared interests.

Online Media Storage

Websites that allow you to store, share and view a range of media such as digital photographs (see Flickr), audio files like podcasts, video (see YouTube).

Carnivals

Weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly roundups of blogs on a particular issue or topic.

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Note: things have already moved on, and this would not still be my essential list of terms.

What is the Internet? Nice intro / reminder

Nice advert by BT, giving us a sense of what the Internet is. We use it in training sessions sometimes.

Now you need never wonder what that little groove called under your nose in called…

How many people in your organisation / community could do with understand what the Internet is? Tailored, experiential training sessions available.

In Recovery – Affluenza

Troubled?

Read Affluenza.

Watch/listen to Lily… she’s growing up. Maybe we all can.

“I’m a weapon of massive consumption. But it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.”

Spread the antidotes, not the virus.

You are a Neuron — Slides

Here are the slides from my talk this evening at Twitter Dev Nest.  It was great fun writing and delivering this talk, and thanks for the great feedback in person and over Twitter.

Speaking at Twitter Developer Nest London

24 March, 2009
6:00 pm	to	10:00 pm

I’m giving a talk at the first Twitter Developer Nest in London next Tuesday, with a talk titled You are a Neuron, on something that has been floating around in the back of the old mind for a bit.   It is less of a technical ‘how to make this’ or ‘how I made this’ developer talk, and more of a call-to-arms or provocation to developers.

I’m going to step back from Twitter and look at the whole of it.  And draw some parallels with other things in the world, like your brain.

It ought to be a bit of fun and provoke some new thinking.  I’m thinking we need to go a bit deeper with these social utilities and really think about why something like Twitter is attactive and interesting.   I’m quite sure it is not just about my friends and I having a chat.

Anyway, I’ll post slides and stuff as they come together.

(How) can Web 2.0 help save the human race?

Via YouTube, via Twitter, via WordPress… to you.

Participation culture, creativity & social change – by Prof David Gauntlett (Age: 37), Professor of Media and Communications, at University of Westminster, UK.

Reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2030 (or sooner)? How are we going to do that!!? David Gauntlett says, through encouraging more creativity in education and everyday life.

By moving from a “sit back and be told culture” (ie. school) to a “making and doing / connection” culture (assisted by web 2.0 participation and mass creativity).

Ivan Illich is yet again quoted (why do I so love defrocked catholic priests) and our friends at School of Everything will already know David I’m sure.

Richard Sennett’s wonderful book The Craftsman is also referenced.

I’m with them all the way…

But will we have the guts to offer our Bea (8) the South Down’s Learning Centre rather than mainstream factory-style high school, or maybe the local high is not as bad as it might seem…

Ahh – the personal and the political. But back to packing… we’ve got some carbon to burn (sigh). Train next time…

More from David Gauntlett here and here.

Alan Watts v South Park – Meaning of Life

Love Alan Watts. Interesting that the South Park guys wanted to team up to do this.

And on that note, we’re off on holiday for a week’s food, love and snow in Bardonecchia, Italian Alps.

Many thanks to Bea’s outstanding school Down’s Junior for approving of the extra holiday. No doubt it will be highly educational, in the deepest, funnest (is that a word?) sense of things.

Many thanks also to the 16 Guidelines to Happiness / Essential Education folk for sharing the video. More good clips and resources on their website.

Communities of Practice: Conversations To Collaboration

Lots in this fine presentation, but well worth flicking through and pondering.

Communities of Practice came up when I began an MA in Person Centred Education. I believe they have profound implications for lifelong learning.

Google pushes for open Energy data, launches PowerMeter

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has today announced Google PowerMeter, a tool that will take energy consumption data from smart household energy meters and make the data available and easy to understand.

This will be very useful to bring social energy measurement alive, where you and I can compare our energy use and work out how to reduce it.  It helps that Google.org are also pushing for free and open access to energy data for consumers.  This from their December submission to Californian energy regulators:

Accordingly, Google urges the Commission to include the following principles in its smart grid policy, discussed in greater detail below:

• Consumers should have direct access to real-time electricity usage information.
• Electricity usage information should be freely available to consumers.
• Electricity usage data should be made available in a standardized, open format, freely available to third-parties with permission from the consumer.

Freely available, standardised, open access to real-time energy data.  Once consumers have that, they can close the loop and easily reduce consumption.

The Google PowerMeter looks like access to smart meter billing information placed into some energy visualizations tools, and what also looks like some detection of the signature of particular appliances energy use.

Here’s an introductory video:

That all looks very cool.

The part that really interests me is that this gives a big push forward for open access to energy data, which then allow a whole ecosystem of tools and applications to develop to aid people in reducing their energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and money spent on energy.

Once we can make these energy measurements available, we can make them social, compare with each other, learn and save energy.

For a long time the big energy industries haven’t been too interested in opening up and giving us information, especially real-time information.

Let’s hope PowerMeter comes out of testing soon, and we get to see it operating here in the UK.  And let’s get these open standards up and running ASAP.  We’ve got a lot of measuring to do and changes to make to bring our energy consumption down.

Is that 7g or 0.2g CO2 per Google search?

You may recall news stories last month claiming that a google search results in 7g of CO2 emissions.   This story resulted in a storm of comment and reporting, a clarification from google (0.2g per search), and somewhat of a clarification from the original study’s author.  But all the resulting hoo har goes to show:

• The original claim was woefully unclear as reported
• Releasing research headlines without the research is troublesome and results in misunderstandings
• We’ll need to get a lot better at identifying what we are actually measuring when talking energy and CO2

I want to break this story down and inject some facts in, and hopefully we’ll learn something in the process.

So, starting at the beginning:

The Sunday Times reported on January 11 that a Google search produced about 7g of CO2.  In their words:

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

Now, you’d hope the rest of the article would go on to clarify this a bit.  That 7g per search.  What does that include? Where are the boundaries drawn around what a search is?  Not explained.  So, that get left to indivudual interpretation and that’s where this sort of measurement and claim gets messy and there is a resulting storm of voices claiming This and That.

Google quickly posted a blog post and said that the energy required by Google’s servers to handle one search is 0.2g CO2.

Supposedly measuring the same thing, but we have over an order of magnitude difference?   This comes down to what is actually being measured, as later clarifications revealed.

The original 7g of CO2 per search was actually made up from several searches and a few minutes of time sitting at a PC, and it included the energy of the PC used to start the search, not just Google’s servers.  Here’s the Jan 16 clarification by The Times:

A report about online energy consumption (Google and you’ll damage the planet, Jan 11) said that “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle” or about 7g of CO2 per search. We are happy to make clear that this does not refer to a one-hit Google search taking less than a second, which Google says produces about 0.2g of CO2, a figure we accept. In the article, we were referring to a Google search that may involve several attempts to find the object being sought and that may last for several minutes. Various experts put forward carbon emission estimates for such a search of 1g-10g depending on the time involved and the equipment used

Bingo. That’s the detail we originally needed.  It ain’t about Google’s servers or the search itself, but about you sitting down in front of a foot-warming PC with a big, bright screen and tapping away for a bit trying to find something out.  And we now have a range of 1g to 10g depending on circumstances.

So, the mention of Google at all in the story is pretty spurious,  they claim 0.2g for their part of the search, the rest is elsewhere.   A more correct statement could to be something like… “Using a PC and the Internet produces CO2 at the rate of between 1 and 10g CO2 per few minutes depending on your computer setup and what you are doing” (or something like that, please don’t quote this statement).

Basically, the Sunday Times got it wrong.  They did the classic lazy blame-somebody-else story, blaming the CO2 on Google, when it is really much more about a home PC and how it is used, and the rest of the Internet equipment used to move all that data around.

One more quote, from a followup article from TechNewsWorld put it basically to rest:

One problem: the study’s author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. “For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google,” Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. “Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site.”

And the example involving tea kettles? “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.

An average 0.02g of CO2 per second.  That’s 1.2g per minute, or 72g CO2 per hour.

Contrast that to driving your car, which likely produces 200g CO2 per km or more.  Drive 1km, or browse the net for nearly three hours?

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