Methods and Platforms to Make the Most of Social Media

I find social media to be a bit of a paradox.  There is a clever commercial Toyota came up with that shows a young adult woman lamenting her parents plight because they only have a few Facebook friends: meanwhile the scene cuts to her parents out mountain biking with a bunch of friends.  The message is clearly that they are too busy actually socializing to take part in the virtual social medium.  Clever and worth some thought.

Does this mean I'm giving up social media?  Not hardly.  However, I'm constantly looking for ways to streamline my experience so that social media adds to my life rather than interfering with it.  Social media walks a fine line: it can be informative or intrusive.

Facebook is a perfect example of this.  I had all but stopped using it about a year ago.  If I made a comment on someone's wall and someone else commented, I got an email and a notification in Facebook.  In fact, I felt like if someone in my network sneezed I got an email.  I went so far as to 'clean up' my friend's list - the horror!  It got to a point where I missed any information I would've been interested in for the flood of information I wasn't.

Then a couple of things happened: I figured out how to turn off email notifications and Facebook added the 'hide updates' feature.  I got Facebookstein back under control (in fact his table manners are excellent now).

Twitter is actually a similar tightrope to walk.  So many accounts are promoting one thing or another, if I'm not careful who or what I follow any valuable information is lost in an avalanche of updates.  The list of users I follow tends to be fairly dynamic for this reason; if I find a particular person or service I'm following annoying (for lack of a nicer term) I unfollow with extreme prejudice.  Of Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus (the social media services I frequent) I find Twitter has the highest percentage of muck to wade through for anything I'm actually interested in.  On the other hand, it's also one of the fastest ways to get anecdotal feedback on almost anything - I'm just scratched the surface of the potential to spot trends and find this pretty intriguing.

That brings me to Google Plus.  This is without question the least intrusive of the three services I use, but almost to a detrimental degree.  I tend to forget about Google Plus, which is NOT the hallmark of a great social media service.  When I do check it, there doesn't seem to be much activity.  What I've been trying to figure out is why?

The interface is clean and well-integrated with all other Google services.  It's easy to get to and as I said above not intrusive.  Most sites and articles now offer a '+1' button allowing anyone to give a virtual thumb's up to what they've read.  Here's where I think things break down a bit.

What does my +1 do?  Admittedly, I haven't done any research on this (yet), but I have no idea what purpose it serves for me to +1 something.  Yes, I see the icon turn from white to blue indicating I've given my approval, but I already knew that, didn't I?  In many cases giving a +1 allows me then the option to share the article with my Google Plus circles - but what if I choose not to?  Is there any value in the +1 itself?

I'm sure the answer is out there, but the fact that I have to look for it indicates a problem.  With Facebook, if I 'like' something it shows up on my 'Wall' and is shared with anyone of my friends who is monitoring my updates.  Pretty clear.  With Google Plus I have to take the additional step of sharing with my circles, and if I don't do so I'm unclear what the point is of the +1.

Is this what Google Plus seems so quiet?  Are my friends out there +1-ing like crazy but not sharing?  Are they sharing with circles that I don't belong too?

This is another issue I have with Google Plus: I'm rarely clear on the exact audience to my posts.  I have approximately two dozen followers that I don't know, and I'm unclear how they found me.  When I share I almost always share to my circles (rarely Public, though that's changing) so I don't know how people have found me or what information I've put out that would cause them to follow me.  Again, I think this should be clear, especially if Google wants the masses to get actively on board.

The final issue with Google Plus is accessibility.  There are dozens of applications which aggregate Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et.al. but I haven't had one that included Google Plus.  In fact that's what motivated me to write this article (can I call it that?) today.  When I began to look for a client that would bring all my social media together it started me thinking about what I've used to this point.

I began using Facebook and Twitter in their native web form - how mundane!  For a short time I used Fishbowl my Microsoft, which showed promise but as I remember was a bit buggy.  From there I used Seesmic for sometime and that was a very solid application.  For some reason though - and unfortunately I cannot remember what - I went to Tweetdeck, which I'm using now and also like very well.  However it does not include Google Plus and so my search began today.

From a quick Google search I found the following Google Plus post from Marshall Kirkpatrick:

I feel Google Plus slipping away,,,

which echoed my feelings about Google Plus and the need for integration with a social media platform.  His post yielded many comments in a short time, some suggesting that HootSuite offers Google Plus integration and others claiming this is an invitation (or paid) feature only).

I'm going to download HootSuite out and give it a try.  I like the idea of an independent platform (TweetDeck was bought by Twitter) and it offers analytics that TweetDeck doesn't (as far as I know).  I'll report back here on the overall experience once I've used it for a fair amount of time.  I'll also see if I can get some answers to the questions I posed on how exactly +1 and Google Plus work.

The first step is the hardest...

I guess I'll do like they suggested in school and use this first entry to tell you what I'm going to tell you.

I love tech.  I love games and gadgets.  I stream netflix from my phone, roku, xbox360, and bluray player.  I'm always on the lookout for the next gadget or service that will make life better or easier or cooler.

On top of this I enjoy what social media has done for all of us.  I get 'updates' on gear and games from Twitter (via Tweetdeck).  I can get feedback from 100's of people by making a post with a hashtag.  Granted, it ain't scientific research, but crowd-sourcing information if a newborn and will only get better.  Just ask movie studios - a new flic can easily be done after opening night based on the power of social media - word gets out FAST.

So what does this all have to do with some Schmo starting another blog?  I think it comes down to the defining value of information - trust.  Let's take a recent example.

After a little under two years with Sprint I've had enough and I'm switching my wife and I back to Verizon Wireless.  As part of the process we were in the market for new smartphones, so I began researching which Android phone would be perfect for each of us.  Not so easy right now as there are some great choices with the Droid Razr, the HTC Rezound, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.  Much of my time was spent following trends on twitter, doing searches on Google, and sharing some of my findings on twitter, facebook and Google Plus.  What I found was that I started to have trust in certain people's tweets more than others, and certain people (some I knew and others I didn't) began to ask me for feedback on the purchase I made (I got the Razr for a penny from Amazon).

Reviews from the big tech sites are great, but people still like to ask someone they know what they think about something - and for good or bad after we interact via social media we begin at a certain point to feel that we 'know' one another.  It's not a big reach to follow this line of thinking, after all this is what Netflix's entire movie recommendation logarithm is based on; they start to see similarities between user's rankings and use that to predict what else they might have in common.

Likewise, I follow someone on twitter or facebook because I like what he or she has to say, and over time I get to 'know' the person and value their opinion to some degree.

Or maybe I'm full of crap.

Nonetheless, here I am with my own little tech blog.  Next up I'll share my initial thoughts on the Razr as I continue to break it in and consider whether I'll swap it for a Galaxy Nexus (assuming the latter is ever brought to market).

That's all for now, Happy Black Friday everybody.