Archive for Google
Anybody There at Feedburner? I Need Help
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Image via CrunchBase
My blog is automatically distributed to my subscribers when I hit the “publish” button. It usually works very smoothly. But lately, the gremlins have been at work. So if you are a subscriber, I apologize that twice last week you received an email with my latest blog post and the links to 9 previous posts. I had nothing to do with it!
No Customer Support
Feedburner, owned by Google, is a service that 99% of bloggers use to distribute their posts. But there is no way to get in touch with the company when you have a problem. You are directed to Feedburner Help Groups whose members are simply other Feedburner users who may be able to help you with your problem if you can’t find an answer in Feedburner’s Q&A section. Fine and dandy, but I saw my question posted earlier by other users. The response? Nada.
How are ordinary folks, like me, supposed to work out these technical problems? As I’ve often said, technology is great when it works. It’s not working, Feedburner!!
If you are a fellow blogger and know what is causing the problem, please leave me a comment.
Thank you!
Are you on Tumblr? What It Is and How to Get Started
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Image via CrunchBase
When I read in a Nielsen study that Tumblr ranks third in time people spend on a social network, after Facebook and Blogger but ahead of Twitter, I decided it was time to learn more about it.
Sure, I’ve had an account for quite a while, but that hardly counts as being active. I’m a regular blogger on my own self-hosted site, post to Twitter and Facebook daily, and I’m very involved with the LinkedIn community. Isn’t that enough? Maybe not. So I wrote my first blog on Tumblr, which I describe later in this post with screen shots of how you do it.
Next Great Social Network?
Tumblr is a blogging platform but much more. The power of Tumblr resonated in a post on Pro Blogger about how a single Tumblr link drove a blog post to the top of Google search. Tumblr says it’s had close to 10 billion total posts and almost 20 million total blogs, more than WordPress.com.
Social media maven Steve Rubel, in a recent post entitled Tumblr is the Next Great Social Network, described it this way, “Tumblr, to me at least, isn’t a blog platform but something new entirely — a social network for both original and curated content that is longer than a tweet and often more visual in nature. It’s a hybrid.”
Through the Tumblr dashboard, you can post text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video, slideshows, and more, creating a network effect like the one that drove the Pro Blogger writer’s post to the top of Google search.
How Does it Work?
I decided to write my first post, learning by doing. If you’re new to Tumblr you should first sign up. Here is how the registration page looks (with sample blogs). You simply enter your name, email address and URL from your website at the bottom in the rectangular windows.
Next, you click on “start posting.” You will be taken to a dashboard. Note that at the top of the dashboard there is a Chat icon which allows you to have conversations with other members. You can also upload audios and videos. I added my Tumblr account to my Facebook news feed so my blogs will be automatically posted on my wall. I also chose the option to post them to my Twitter account. Here is the dashboard:
You’re given the option of uploading an image from your own computer or another site. Tumblr has a neat editing program for images, and a variety of blog templates. I initially uploaded an image thinking it would be my blog header, but it ended up at the bottom of my post so I’ll need to figure that out. But if you want to keep it simple, you don’t even need an image. Here is how my plain vanilla post looks:
If you are a new blogger, you might find your first attempts at writing a blog, inserting links and uploading images a little intimidating. I didn’t see any detailed instructions. I’m sure if you do a Google search you can find how-to articles. And, like other social networks, there are discussion forums where you can ask for help.
While Tumblr is growing in popularity, it is still a bit of a mystery to many people, what with Facebook and Google+ hogging most of the spotlight lately. But that’s going to change with Tumblr nipping at their heels in its race to be the leading online community where people spend the most time hanging out.
So are you on Tumblr? How would you compare it to your experience on Facebook and Twitter?
My Take on Google+ — I’ve Made Time to Hang Out
Posted by: | CommentsI promised myself that I wouldn’t write about Google+ because didn’t I say just a few posts ago that I don’t have time to hang out on any more social networks? I’ve changed my mind. (I’m allowed).
For starters, I want to point out, if you look to your right, that I not only did I join Google+ but you can follow me by adding me to one of your circles. This takes some explaining if you haven’t yet joined Google+ or are just getting your feet wet, as I am.
Google+ Circles
One of the big differences between Google+ and Facebook is that you can segregate your connections into separate categories. Google+ calls them circles. It’s so simple to add people to your circles. Google+ has nicely started four for you called Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. You can add more circles and name them what you want – college alumni, cooking class, celebrities. You get the idea. I’ve included a screen shot of my circles shown at the left.
This is where I think Google+ has a big edge over Twitter and Facebook. If you’re on the receiving end of a friend’s stream, you will only receive updates that are relevant to your circle. You don’t need to know what his Aunt Tilly ate last night for dinner. Also, you can restrict what you say within each Circle. This allows for private conversations that you can’t have on Facebook.
Hangouts
This is another neat feature. You can start a hangout – a sort of chat room – where you can sign in Skype-like and a live video of you shows up. If your friends are also hanging out you can have a conversation.
I’ve filled out my profile, and my stream is filling with updates from people in my Follow circle who are mainly social media mavens that I also follow on Twitter. I need to start posting more content and adding people to my circles. Of course, it all takes time. But I find Google+ more user friendly than Facebook and I think it will be more useful to my business. Specializing in social media communications, I need to know about this newest network where clients and prospects may be hanging out. So I need to hang out, too.
Have you joined Google+ or do you plan to? What do you think of it? The service is still by invitation-only as they roll it out. Let me know if you would like me to send you an invitation and I will. Oh, and if you enjoyed this post, please click on the +1 to the right. It’s the equivalent of the FB like.
The Filter Bubble – How Search Engines Shape Our View of the World
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Image via CrunchBase
Eli Pariser, the liberal advocate, has written a book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You and gave a talk about it at recent TED conference. Thanks to my friend and colleague Joyce Newman, a leading media and presentation trainer, for bringing it to my attention. Pariser’s basic thesis is that the major players on the Internet — Google, Facebook, Yahoo News and others — are filtering what we see to a much greater extent than we may realize.
Pariser recounted a couple of examples in the video from TED that is below this post. While he is a liberal, he also likes to follow conservatives to see what they have to say. One day he was surprised to learn the conservatives had disappeared from his Facebook feed without Facebook consulting him. Because Facebook’s algorithims had detected that he visited liberal friends more often than conservative friends, they simply edited out the conservatives.
Image via CrunchBase
Pariser found Google was doing it, too. He asked friends to search the same word — Egypt – and the results were dramatically different. He concludes — and it’s difficult to disagree — that the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see but not necessarily what we need to see.
That’s how he came to write the Filter Bubble — to show how these content editors (the algorithims) don’t have embedded ethics as they curate the world for us. Pariser believes they must show us other points of view and not just what we’ve searched for. The people writing these codes must take on a sense of civic responsibility so the process is transparent and we can decide what gets through our filters and what does not. I think you’ll find his talk, which is only about 9 minutes long, enlightening — and a little frightening.
