Blog Your Voice

Twitter’s New “Who to Follow” Feature Rewards Diligent Users

by Tim Baran on August 5, 2010

Twitter has rolled out a new feature, labeled “Who to Follow” that helps you find others with similar interests.

The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow, making it somewhat useless for those who follow tens of thousands of mostly meaningless, even spammy accounts.

I’d like to think that this new feature rewards those of us who diligently monitor our accounts, keeping it lean and relevant, following only (or mostly) those who share our interests on a professional and/or personal level.

Tagged as: twitter

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Facebook: Tag Amongst Yourselves

by Tim Baran on July 31, 2010

in Social Media

The Saturday Night Live skit, Coffee Talk with Linda Richman popularized the term, “Talk amongst yourselves” in the 90′s. A decade later, British dance-rock duo Grand National further cemented the term into the lexicon with a title from Kicking the National Habit, their debut album.

Times, they are a changing. Facebook has reworked the admonition to “tag amongst yourselves”. It’s all about images, photographs, of you…and me.

The other day I was cleaning up removing items from my “events” page when the image above popped up (Stewie from Family Guy is not in my network, but I substituted him to protect the innocent. I don’t think he’ll mind). It surfaced again when I was checking out the photo album of a friend.

Tagged as: facebook, Privacy

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Happy to Lose Thousands of Twitter Followers by Not Auto-Following

by Tim Baran on July 18, 2010

in Social Media

I started my Twitter journey in earnest on April 1, 2009. Yes, the date is not insignificant, though it seems a lot less foolish now than it did back then.

Over the past fifteen months, covering 7,000+ tweets and following almost 700, I’m at around 1,400 followers.

Tagged as: twitter

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Could Face Recognition be Far Behind Facebook’s New Face Detection?

by Tim Baran on July 4, 2010

in Social Media

Facebook announced in a blog post on July 1, that it is rolling out a new faster and easier way for you to tag your own photos based on face detection technology. So, instead of drawing a box around your friend’s face and then tagging her, Facebook automatically recognizes where her face is located and a box pops up with face already selected and you simply type in her name and hit enter.

In Ask First Before Tagging People in Pictures on Facebook from a couple of months ago, I noted in the comments, “The reality is that very soon photos will be auto-tagged, thanks to face recognition technology“. I couldn’t imagine that the process would start this soon!

Tagged as: facebook, Privacy

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Why I Engage John Lichtenberger and Eric Fletcher on Twitter

by Tim Baran on June 18, 2010

in Social Media

Thanks to the gracious social skills and generosity of John Lichtenberger and Eric Fletcher, it’s accurate to say that we engage, rather than follow each other.

Truly meaningful, is the remarkable consistency and kindness that these gentlemen exhibit in their use of this medium. Two traits that I dearly value.

Unifying characteristics and points of relation include:

Tagged as: Follow Friday, twitter

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WordPress 3.0 Resources

by Tim Baran on June 17, 2010

in Social Media

After testing many blogging platforms, I’ve become a WordPress believer and advocate. 3.0 is the latest new, massive update. I’ve already updated a test blog and will be doing the same with this site.

Instead of imparting my somewhat limited knowledge about this new update, I’ve instead, linked to some particularly useful articles and videos. I’ll be updating this post with more useful links as they’re published. This will serve as my 3.0 resource page should I have questions or encounter problems. Hope you find it useful. If you have suggestions for additional resources, please share.

Tagged as: blogging, wordpress

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Why I am a Social Media Fan of Wong Ching Ya and Danny Brown

by Tim Baran on June 11, 2010

in Social Media

While I deeply appreciate the #FollowFriday meme that Twitter spawned, I’ve gone away from using it since I’d have to send out a ton of recommendations every Friday. There are many dear folks on Twitter and other social media platforms that I’ve come to appreciate day after day. So, instead, I choose one or more and compose a short post on why I appreciate and recommend these folks. I need to be more consistent about this

I discovered Danny Brown and Ching Ya a few months ago and I’ve included both in this post because as I considered the reasons I appreciated one, it applied directly to the other.

Tagged as: facebook, Follow Friday, Social Media, twitter

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