Best Way to Grow Your Social Network – Be

Admit it, you want to be popular. We all do. Especially on the social networks, where popularity sometimes seems to usurp quality of content.

 

But don’t worry content – your day is here, always. Most of the time. Unless you post a picture of a cute cat frolicking in the flowers, or some motivational quote by Albert Einstein, or a picture of a hot chick in a skimpy outfit.

Damn those meaningless over-hyped content-draining time wasters!

Although those meaningless over-hyped content-draining time wasters get lots of “likes” and “+1” those moments are short lived.

Just as quick as images of cute kittens appear, they fall by the wayside for the stuff that not only will increase your fans, friends and followers, but keep them engaged and tuned into your posts.

So what’s the best way to grow your social network, against mind numbing cuteness?

Just Be.

Be Bold.

Be Brave.

Be Present.

Be anything you are, right here and right now.

By being you, just as you are, you are providing content online no one else can – you’re being you.

Think about that.

There is only one YOU.

(Unless you have an evil twin – then I can’t help you.)

But for most of us, there really is only one YOU.

And as individuals, we have our own styles, hobbies, interests, senses of humor, personalities, and most importantly life experiences.

There’s the rub!

A little lower. Ah that hits the spot. . . 

Life experiences even of those who attend the same event are different – influenced by each person’s own perspectives, education, biases and all the diverse things that make us all unique from one another.

Better yet, by sharing the bits and pieces of our lives, we engage others online, as we key into the personal nature of the information being shared, and that ignites a sense of closeness which you can’t get from some meaningless over-hyped content-draining time waster.

Of all my tweets, blogs and posts which I share on the social networks, the ones that get the most responses to are the ones where I’m just being me.

So let that be a lesson to you – just be you.

Is Facebook Drowning Itself?

Ah, Facebook, don’t you ever learn?

Yesterday, the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook, changed all its users email addresses to some silly, impossible to remember number@facebook.com.

Doesn’t matter what you set your default email address to on your contact page, it was changed to the social network’s own email system.

Thanks for telling us about the change. Hell, don’t you knock first? Wouldn’t it have been more polite to ask us users first?

Yes it would have, but that’s never been Mark Zuckerberg’s way. The young self-made zillionare that founded Facebook has never been one to care about the 400 million members when making dramatic changes to their personal information, why would he care about how people contact you from their site?

Over the years, under Zuckerberg’s leadership, Facebook has got flack from members for making changes affecting the use of personal private information, which have created even more tension between the social network’s top brass and various governments around the world.

Facebook has always had the pig-headed blindness to turn on these new “features” or “enhancements” as they refer to them, forcing their members to either turn them off, or disable them after the fact.

If it wasn’t for all the media hype around these changes, most wouldn’t know about them – thanks Facebook for letting us know.

For years we have tolerated this rude behavior – everyone’s on Facebook. But the social networking landscape is changing.

 

Twitter is still king for short status updates, YouTube is the video social network which is always on, and dare we say Facebook is being given a run for it’s money by Google+?

The world’s largest and most popular search engine began a social networking service recently, called it Google+ (or G+ for short) and it is increasingly growing as Facebook continues to give the middle finger to its users and government regulators.

Google+ -- so far – has learned a thing or two about being polite, and not forcing changes upon its users. G+ seems to go out of their way to make privacy settings simple, so you know exactly what information you are sharing and with whom. And the Google+ interface is visually stunning, placing an emphasis on the images associated with the post, making it a joy to browse.

Back when Facebook began, it was the only game in town. People joined often sceptically like myself, not so much to network socially, but to catch up with friends and family from years gone by.

When most started their Facebook pages, we added everyone we used to know, but had lost touch with, because there was no one else using Facebook that we knew to add.

Social networking was a new world, where people were more caught up in the ability to actually connect with old friends and family, instead of just becoming popular.

These days, the popularity bug has bitten most social network platforms, so it’s not who you know, it’s how many. 

And that popularity thing extends beyond the amount of friends, fans and followers, to the actual networks, so the more people saying good things about your social network, the more likely people will use that social network.

Just look at how quickly Pinterest has grown, thanks in part to the positive hype, while the once popular Digg has been long since forgotten, due to lots of negative talk on the social networks and in the media.

The more people complaining about your social network – Facebook take note – the fewer people using your social network, and eventually that social network dies. Myspace was once thought to take over Facebook, but now, most don’t even mention it except when talking about social networking relics from the past. If it wasn’t for the handful of musicians using Myspace, it would have been dead and buried long ago.

Popularity might not be the best judge of character, but it certainly has economic power -- if your once popular product or service suddenly falls out of favor, people stop using it, and the business dies.

Just look at Research In Motion (RIM)’s BlackBerry – once the primary smartphone, RIM ruled the stock market. These days, RIM is the butt of jokes and speculation about the future of the company, as they have failed to keep up with innovations in smartphone tech, and they have lost focus of their primary user-base.

If Facebook continues to alienate and offend their user, as other social networks mature and expand, eventually Facebook will be just like RIM – barely able to float in the cyberspace sea of change.

Stop Tweeting About Life and Start Living It

Last week, someone famous whose name escapes me, tweeted: “Stop Tweeting about life and start living it.”

Although I chuckled a bit when I read that, it made complete sense.

Technology is such an everyday part of our lives, sometimes we spend too much time fiddling with our gadgets, instead of enjoying life.

I experienced this over the weekend. I went for a hike with one of my meetup.com groups. Meetups are great ways to make friends in the real world. I’ve been with this particular meetup group for some time, and have made some great friends through it.

We went for a hike in a beautiful river park, dotted with waterfalls, swans swimming along the river, and the lushness of green leaves and wild flowers everywhere. It was a wonderful way to get back to nature, and away from technology for a few hours.

Or so I thought.

Every time we approached a waterfall, swans swimming, or any of the other natural eye-pleasing beauties, people grabbed their smartphones and ran as close as they could to snap a picture.

I’m guilty of this too. I’d be happily chatting with someone during the hike, enjoying the conversation and the fresh air, only to occasionally break up reality, so I could take a picture with my iPhone.

Our technology allows us to share our experiences with others from around the world, but doesn’t it seem to be self-defeating when the need to share with people you may never actually meet, takes you away from those in the real world?

Or worse, doesn’t it seem odd that technology steals us away from living the moments of our lives, as we come to a full stop to capture the moment, instead of experiencing it?

As we continued on our hike, I took fewer and fewer pictures, because I wanted to experience the hike, nature and share the moments with those present in those moments, rather than losing out on the experience, to share with complete strangers that may never really be part of my life.

Not that those that follow me online aren’t unique and engaging individuals. Just the chances of most of the people I chat with online of actually meeting in the real world and getting to know each other well is slim to none.

And I think that’s where we lose out on life –when we focus all our energies on sharing the experiences with others outside of those experiences, instead of living those experiences in the here and now with those involved in those experiences.

The online world is a great place to lose yourself, and forget about the problems of the real world. But it is not a replacement for the real world. Eventually, we all have to go back to reality, and live our lives.

So from now on, I’ll make sure to live life in the moment – though I may stop a few times to share with the online world.

Cool Apps Only Work if Used – Duh!

Anyone who knows me knows I love my iPhone. It is far more than a phone, and more than a computer, because it’s so personal.

 

Which is probably why I have over a 150 apps on the thing.

I have an app -- SoundHound -- that will “listen” to songs, identify the name of the song, the band playing it, the songwriters, even display the lyrics in Karaoke format as the music is playing so I can sing along.

I have an app that tells me my current heart rate, and what I should be aiming for at rest and during a workout. I have an app that will help me rest and sleep, by playing soothing sounds, images and binaural beats – which the documentation claims, are psychological sounds to put your mind in specific mental states.

When you have apps to seduce you to sleep at the psychological level – you just know they must have an app for everything.

But then you get apps which do wonderful and amazing things, but they require your friends to use them too.

One of the coolest apps I have is Bump, which allows you to instantly share selected photos and contact details with another person, just by bumping your smartphone (iPhone, BlackBerry or Android) together.

It eliminates the hassle of trying to type in their contact details quickly, and ensures that neither person writes down the wrong information. 

Whenever I want to exchange my contact details with a new friend or colleague, I always ask “do you bump?”

After their initial reaction of “WTF?!?” fades, I explain the Bump app, and ask if they use it.

Although everyone seems really curious how it works – by sharing your contact details over Wi-Fi or 3G networks – they admit that they don’t have the app. So, instead of getting to use this really awesome high-tech way of connecting with someone, we do it the old fashioned way, and either exchange business cards, or verbally tell each other our contact details, as we hammer them into our phones.

What a waste of good tech!

Another really cool app I use which goes to waste far too often is Viber. Viber allows you to make voice calls and send Short Message Service (SMS) text messages to anyone around the world, using your smartphone’s data plan, instead of it’s voice plan. This means you avoid long distance calls, and don’t use up your voice plan’s minutes. 

I’ve used Viber, and text messages are sent and received almost instantly – you’d never know it was being relayed using a data service instead of your service provider’s SMS network. Voice calls are crisp and clear, and you’d never know you were talking on a data plan instead of a voice network.

Problem is – as with Bump – in order to utilize this cool tech, your friends have to use it too. I have a handful of friends using Viber. 

Or should I say, I have a handful of friends that HAVE Viber on their phones. When someone in your smartphone’s contact list installs Viber, you are automatically notified by the app, so you can now use it.

However, you can still make calls and send text messages to those who have Viber using your service provider’s voice and SMS network – and I find on average, most people still do.

Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of having the app? 

Viber doesn’t share any personal information, you don’t have to join anything to use it. Just you and your buddy have to have the app installed and running on your smartphones to make voice or text message calls using it.

I turn off apps when I’m not using them, but I always keep Viber running so that those who have it and have my iPhone’s number can take advantage of it. But they don’t – usually when they call me, it’s through the normal cell network.

Another cool use of tech wasted.

Makes me wonder if I should even bother to keep Viber running, or if I should even bother to keep Viber or Bump installed on my phone. Although they are both great apps, what’s the use if no one is using ‘em?

Sometimes, even the best apps can be so frustrating!