Archive for category personal

Social Media – Top 25

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, personal, social media, society on August 30, 2010

Social Media Camp, Victoria BC, October 3rd, 2010

It’s been over 8 months since my last social media top 10 list, so I figured it was time for an update. Last time, my top 10 list was actually a top 18, so I figured I’d just bite the bullet, and make this one a top 25.

If you are using social media for business, you are probably best to stick with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (perhaps with a dash of YouTube or Flickr). But if you are a geek like me, you might find a few little gems in this list.

25. Google Buzz

So much buzz, yet so little sting. It’s my new FriendFeed, although I don’t think Google intended it to be used this way. I rarely use it, despite the fact it’s in my face every time I use GMail.

24. MySpace

Oh! How far you have fallen, MySpace. For those of you who haven’t heard of MySpace, it’s a website where you can find music. Is there anything else? Not really. Don’t accuse me of dissin’ MySpace though, you’ll notice this list doesn’t include bebo, hi5, Friendster, Multiply, Plaxo, ecademy, or any of the other also-ran general interest social networks.

23. Identi.ca

It’s like a better Twitter, only it hasn’t reached critical mass. I hope they have some commercial success with status.net, because competition is good.

22. FriendFeed

As predicted, Facebook bought FriendFeed and did nothing with it. It was number 10 on my last list.

21. meme by Yahoo!

I have met some very interesting people on this. It’s another offering that blurs the line between micro-blogging and blogging (like Posterous and Tumblr tend to); it seems to be a great place to profile photography. Like VIMEO, it’s a better network not for the features or marketing potential, but for the interesting users and their content.

20. Hunch

Great idea – a taste graph for the social web. I hope it catches on; a good idea is only that unless it gains critical mass. Notably, the founder of Hunch was also a co-founder of Flickr.

19. StumbleUpon

I have nothing against StumbleUpon, and I know it can be a dream come true for people who spend all their time on SEO. It’s fun and easy to use, but I honestly don’t use it much…

18. Slideshare

Share your PDFs and PPTs easily, embed them elsewhere, and share them directly on Slideshare itself, with your friends and contacts there. Great tool!

17. Goodreads

Do you read good? This is a great social network for people who like to read. I love it, even though I don’t read so goodly.

16. Flixster

I like movies. In fact, I like movies a lot. The Flixster website itself is a bit MySpace-y, but the iPhone app rocks. You can mark movies you want to watch, and rate your movies, and add a review. It doesn’t seem this network has caught on, but I use it at least once a week.

15. Sprouter

If LinkedIn is Facebook for business, then Sprouter is Twitter for business. It seems to be catching on. Time will tell.

14. Tumblr

It’s a blog or a microblog, and a social network, all beautifully united. Simple. Fun. I use it a little.

13. Posterous

Another good and simple blogging tool. Notice Tumblr and Posterous are neck-and-neck, I only put Posterous a notch ahead because I use it to subscribe to some great blogs (and they e-mail me a daily digest). However, I don’t use it much to blog (see item 3 for my real bias).

12. Gowalla

Share your location with your friends. Creepy, but fun and interesting. There are a bunch of tools that do this: Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, BrightKite (not on this list), and now Facebook Places (not yet available in Canada). Admittedly I use all 4 (soon to be 5) on my iPhone, and sort of get a kick out of it. I like Yelp the best, and it has a legacy review function, which is, in my opinion, way cooler than the simpler Gowalla and Foursquare.

11. Foursquare

It seems to be the category killer, but the game is definitely not over, especially with Facebook getting in on the act, and Yelp revving up their user base. I put Foursquare ahead of Gowalla, because you can be Mayor of the places you visit! Imagine my joy in being Mayor of First Choice Haircutters!

10. YouTube

Oh, YouTube. So famous, so popular, so immature and anti-social. Your comments remind me of things I used to say when I was 12. YouTube is great because it will host your video, and because it has critical mass. But for grown-ups, VIMEO is much better.

9. VIMEO

It’s like a nice YouTube. Better content, and more mature users. I’m a bit surprised it’s done as well as it has, considering YouTube’s market dominance. There have been other contenders in the video space, too – DailyMotion, VEOH, and others.

8. Meetup

They actually had a friend feature, but they apparently phased it out. But it’s still a social network, in that you can find members of your meetup groups, and see what other groups they are in. It also allows you to indicate your interests, and suggests new groups to you based on geography and interest.

Best of all, Meetup is about meeting people in real life, not just online. And isn’t this the best sort of social networking there can be?

7. Digg

Geek alert. I still like Digg. It’s fun. Sorry.

I’m still a bit unsure about the new version (I was an Alpha user), but I think it will be better in the long run.

6. Facebook

I don’t really like Facebook. However, it must make the list because I do like that I can connect with almost all my friends there. Also, it has some great marketing tools (like Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Ads).

5. Yelp

I really like Yelp. I think it’s better than Gowalla and Foursquare. It started out as a review site, but they’ve since added the check-in functions to mirror Gowalla and Foursquare, and you can be a Duke (or Duchess) instead of a Mayor! What can be better than that!? It’s gaining critical mass, albeit not as quickly as Foursquare.

4. Flickr

Best. Photo. Sharing. Tool. Ever. Forget about TwitPic and TweetPhoto and that frog one… if you want to Tweet a photo, use Flickr! It has some incredibly powerful group and sharing functions, and is itself a social network, too. If you’re going to share photos on Twitter, it’s hands-down the most sensible tool to use.

3. Blogging using WordPress

I’m a huge fan of blogging, and a huge fan of WordPress!

I’ve organized two WordCamp events in Victoria, and cannot say enough good things about it. It’s a great product. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s free (you have to have web hosting, but if you have a website, you can add WordPress fairly easily).

There are numerous other blogging tools (some mentioned in this list), but with the self-installed version of WordPress, you own your social media! And you build your own community. You are not reliant on a startup with an unknown revenue situation or business model to host your media.

I’m a big fan of integrating Feedburner and Disqus, too.

2. LinkedIn

Are you in business now? Will you one day be in business? Do you have business dealings? Are you a professional that might expect one or two job changes or career focus changes sometime in the next thirty years? Are you a student? Are you management? Are you between the age of 18 and 80 and expect to live and work for the next 6 months, or longer?

I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I’ve heard all the excuses for not being on LinkedIn. They are all misguided (at best), lazy or stupid (at worst), and of no validity whatsoever.

You must sign up to LinkedIn immediately, and shame on you for not doing so before now!

This is not Facebook – there are no party photos, funny status updates and kid’s stuff. This is serious business, and it will take all of 5 minutes a month out of your hectic schedule.

1. Twitter

I (heart) Twitter.

It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to talk marketing on Twitter, there are definitely some best practices. But outside of that world, there’s no right or wrong way. Want to socialize? Want to meet people? Want to talk business? Want to talk shop with other people in your business? Want to find out the news or the weather?

Jump on in and join the conversation!

Twitter, as crazy as it may sound, in it’s 140 character glory, is really the everything network, and remains steadfast in it’s number 1 spot on my list.

Epilogue

There you have it, my exhaustive list. You may notice I removed Instant Messaging from the list. I’ve decided it doesn’t apply to this list. Like text messaging, I still use it, of course, and occasionally do business on it – but it’s not inherently social in the 1 to many sense that we’ve come to recognize social media as being.

Like my list? Hate my list? Agree with something? Disagree with something? Did I miss something real obvious?

Please comment on the site!

digg, facebook, flickr, linkedin, meetup, social media, twitter, wordpress, yelp

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My Crappy E-Book – DELIVERED!

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, events, personal, social media on July 13, 2010

Want to get 10,000 followers on Twitter!?! BUY MY E-BOOK!

Want to get 10,000 followers on Twitter!?!

No, I’m not going to charge $0.99 (or 2 for $1.97), as promised, and the first 1,000 people to retweet it will not get a free copy.

This advice is free – for everybody:

The number of followers you have on Twitter means absolutely nothing.

Remember the old analogy: it doesn’t matter how big it is, it matters how you use it.

If you engage with others in a spirit of community (you know, helping your neighbours…), you win and your followers win.

Twitter is an amazing channel for communication, but there are a few things that make it awkward, or even annoying and counter-intuitive. Add spammers to the mix, and the whole experience gets a bit hairy.

So, here’s how I got to 10,000 followers:

1. I stopped caring about the “Home” feed.

The home feed is an age old dilemma for serious Twitter users – once you start following more than a couple hundred people, your home feed becomes effectively useless.

The old answer was to start a “secret” account where you secretly follow the people you really want to? Today, this is much simpler – build a list of the people you truly want to follow.

I use many lists and searches to find who and what I’m looking for on Twitter.

The home feed is dead to me.

2. I discovered the best ways to alert people to your existence is to follow them or list them.

Most people start on Twitter by writing stuff. Intelligent, informative or witty tweets don’t mean anything if nobody is paying attention. Some people get bored and quit; others learn about tagging posts, searching, retweeting, following people, and replying.

I am most interested in connecting with people in my geographic region – Victoria, Vancouver Island, Vancouver, Seattle. This is both natural, and a business decision (my main business, IdeaZone.ca, serves clients primarily in Victoria, and I organize events to serve the region, like the upcoming Social Media Camp).

So I find people I want to connect with, I follow them, and I list them. What have I noticed? Many of them tend to follow-back, and often they send a message.

Many people don’t follow-back.

This is totally fine, and I will eventually unfollow these people. Does that mean I don’t like them anymore? No. It doesn’t matter to me? Remember, I don’t read my home feed, I keep them on my lists, and they still show up in my searches. Some of the best interactions I have are with people who don’t follow me.

I unfollow them simply because Twitter won’t let you follow more than 110% of your followers, so they are using up a notch in my ability to discover and connect with new people by alerting them with a follow.

3. As a policy, I follow people who follow me.

I do this for two reasons: (1) I don’t have time to filter through and find the good or bad accounts, and (2) people cannot send you a DM if you don’t follow them.

The latter is important (for me, not everybody). I’m in business, if I prevent somebody from sending me a DM, I might be preventing them from sending me business, or a referral. I don’t want to risk snubbing a potential client.

I’m fairly certain this policy means I’m “following” some pretty sketchy accounts as a result, but remember, I don’t read my home feed, so all the sketchy people in the world could follow me, and it means nothing to me.

And this, my friends, is how I got to 10,000 followers on Twitter, probably half of them are real people I want to connect with, and the other half are spammers. To the uninformed, it might look pretty to have 10,000 followers, but I can assure you it means nothing – but the several hundred or so folks I have had the privilege of connecting with on Twitter have made a huge difference in my business, and my life.

Thanks for connecting with me!

And thanks for reading My Crappy E-Book.

seattle, social media, social media camp, twitter, Vancouver, vancouver island, victoria

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How My Cellphone Account Got Hacked – And Yours Can Too!

Posted by Paul Holmes in personal on February 9, 2010

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I arrived home after my family vacation to Disneyland in October. I noticed my cellphone bill was quite large, and assumed it was all the awful roaming charges Rogers (and other Canadian cellphone carriers) charge you when you go the U.S. I grumbled (particularly because we tried so hard not to use our phones when we were there), and forgot about it.

I noticed another large invoice on my cellphone in November, and decided to check my bill. I couldn’t find it, so I went on to other things and forgot about it.

In December, right before Christmas, I got a call from the cellphone company that my payment to my account had been declined on my credit card. I told them to try again in a few days, after my payment processed, and went about doing Christmas things.

In early January, they called again – they were trying to process over $800 in charges on my card, after putting through a similar amount in December. I still hadn’t received my bill since September.

Something was terribly wrong!

The Rogers operator asked me who in my family makes all the calls to Australia. Nobody in my family calls Australia.

Then she asked me how many phones I have on my account. I told her I had 2 phones, and she told me I had 5. The “fraud department” would call me back.

Somebody had “hacked” my cellphone account. I immediately freaked out. Was I in for a full-blown identity theft? I started checking and double-checking everything.

When I got a call back from Rogers’ fraud department, I put a secret passcode on my account – an optional feature I was never made aware of. I asked how on earth this could have happened.

This was when the lightning bolt hit.

Without a passcode, all somebody needs to pretend to be you is your full name, phone number and date of birth.

My response: Are you serious?!? (I would have felt OK about a colourful adjective at this point, if I was more inclined to that sort of thing, but my mother taught me better.)

Now for those who don’t know me very well, you’ll know I’m something of a social media evangelist. I give presentations about it, helped found the local chapter of Social Media Club, and otherwise help people understand the technology. Naturally, I’m also an avid user, and use Facebook daily.

Absolutely everything the hacker needed was on my Facebook profile.

But that doesn’t even mean they got it from Facebook. The fact is, it’s pretty easy to find out somebody’s name, phone number and date of birth without Facebook. Perhaps I should have been smarter about it, but I think I can be forgiven for assuming a company like Rogers Wireless would have higher standards of identification.

It turns out that the crook(s) changed my address on the account (twice, apparently, and to invalid addresses), discontinued paper invoices, ordered 3 new phones, and charged up a tonne of long distance on them. This despite Rogers’ fraud department indicating that they very likely just wanted the phones.

The good news is that the Rogers’ fraud department person was very helpful, and ensured me that I will get all the money back, and receive a full account of the phone service charges (and refunded charges) very soon. (Of course, I had over $1,000 “in limbo” for several months, while I awaited the paper invoice that was never to come.)

The bad news is that these punks probably won’t get caught, and probably won’t go to jail. Rogers will report the crime to police, but apparently they are rarely caught.

The moral of the story, if you haven’t already done so, is:

CALL YOUR WIRELESS COMPANY TODAY AND ADD A PASSCODE TO YOUR ACCOUNT.

cellphone, rogers wireless, scam, warning

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Top 10 Social Media

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, personal, social media on December 1, 2009

I have written various articles on social media in the past, and a few people have asked what my favourites are. The following list is not “the best”, nor specifically “the best for application X”, rather my favourites – those I enjoy using or gain specific benefit for using.

10. Ning‘s (like Your Canada)
Ning is a really cool product that allows you to launch your own social networks around specific themes. Your Canada is an example of one I launched to add a social component to our popular Your Canada website.

9. FriendFeed
Everyone was getting excited about FriendFeed, the ultimate social media collaborator. It’s a cool tool because it let’s you tie all your social media activities into one stream. It can be a bit overwhelming though, so I find myself using it sparingly these days.

8. YouTube
Anonymity is still the name of the game on YouTube. As a result, you get poorly spelled and otherwise idiotic comments on videos all the time. This is too bad, given that it otherwise is the best place for exposure, and the tools to connect people socially are actually pretty good. The social aspects of video are still developing, and I suspect a number of other sites may take the lead in “social video” while Google focuses YouTube more on commercializing what they have (and doing this primarily by pushing sponsored videos, vs. an advertising model). Some to watch include Vimeo, DailyMotion, 12seconds.tv, Ustream.tv, blip.tv, and about a few dozen others.

7. Flickr
Yahoo! has one product that kicks ass and totally owns it’s vertical, and that is Flickr. Flickr is the best social medium for sharing photos/images. Picasa is Google’s alternative, and it is OK. A few others are Photobucket and Flixya, but they are a long way from successful at this point.

6. Digg
The DiggBar has revolutionized Digg (much to the chagrin of the ol’ skool Diggers). I use it all the time, and am a bit of a Diggaholic now. It’s a great tool for sharing interesting stuff you find on the web. It also has some great integration tools to very easily share “Dugg” stuff on Facebook and Twitter. I use Digg every single day.

5. Instant Messaging
Three years ago this was number one (followed by blogging and online forums). Three years ago, I did 100% of my instant messaging using MSN Messenger. Two years ago, 80% was MSN and 20% was GoogleTalk. Today, 50% is Facebook, 30% is GoogleTalk and 20% is MSN. As always, ICQ and AIM are 0%. Instant messaging is still a great way to get ahold of people in a hurry.

4. Blogging
I love to blog. I have at least 5 blogs I update regularly, and I love posting comments to other people’s blogs (which is what makes it a social medium). I also love WordPress; I am a total convert to the platform. I even organized a WordCamp in Victoria a few weeks ago, which was tonnes of fun.

3. Facebook
I was a Facebook holdout for ages, but have grown to like it. I like it because almost everyone I know is there. The platform itself is annoying sometimes, and frustrating at others, but they have the critical mass, so it remains a tool I continue to use, even if I use it despite itself.

2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is great for business. At a recent presentation I gave at the University of Victoria to all of their business students, I asked several hundred students how many of them were on Facebook, and almost every hand went up. I then asked how many were on LinkedIn, and about 5 hands went up (I think a few of those hands were faculty, too). This is ashame. LinkedIn is a great tool for business, but also for career building. The guy sitting next to you in class today might be CEO of some big corporation in 10 years. Stay in touch and add them to your network on LinkedIn. I’m not sure if I got through to them or not.

LinkedIn is easy, passive and a great way to introduce people. It’s sort of like a virtual business mixer, but doesn’t require you to smile and dress nicely.

1. Twitter
Even people who love Twitter make fun of it. Twitter is an amazing tool for connecting with people and getting a message out. Through the power of the retweet, your potential network is huge. That conference I organized back in #4 above – I used Twitter as the primary medium through which to promote it, and over 100 local (and international) people showed up. Not too shabby for something people love to make fun of.

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I’ll review my list every once in awhile as my tastes change. It’ll be interesting to look back in the future and see what has changed.

I can already say that “FriendFeed” used to be much higher up the list, and I expect there is a good chance Google Wave and Foursquare will appear here in the next year or two. The influence of mobile and video (and mobile video) should introduce a few new angles to the equation, too.

A few others that I use that didn’t make the top list are Plaxo (11), Yelp (12), Identi.ca (13), Vimeo (14), Meetup (15), SlideShare (16), MySpace (17), and StumbleUpon (18). I have profiles on a few others, but don’t use them much.

I’m always happy to connect with people I know on any of these networks, see my social media links in the right column to link to my profile, or visit my Contact page.

blogging, digg, facebook, flickr, friendfeed, instant messaging, linkedin, ning, social media, twitter, youtube

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Dammit LinkedIn, I’m a college dropout!

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, humour, internet, personal, social media on November 20, 2009

My LinkedIn profile is 85% complete. It has been since I first signed up, and probably will be in 5 years. Why? Because I have not included my education. Here’s my recent correspondence with LinkedIn:

I do not wish to include education in my profile. I am a self-employed college dropout, and it is not relevant.

Yet LinkedIn does not allow an option for “include none”, and insists my profile remains only 85% complete. I find this really annoying, and would appreciate the option to include no education component in my profile.

Is my life incomplete according to LinkedIn because I have been largely educated within the University of Life?

Here is the response:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

And I want to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Unfortunately, this option cannot be changed at this time, I will sent your information to our research and development team for future consideration.

[...]

We appreciate your commitment to making LinkedIn a stronger community!

It was mostly written in a late night moment of jest, but I do wonder how many others fall into a category like mine. Is Bill Gates on LinkedIn? OK, Bill Gates has been a bit more successful than me, but he’s had a few years headstart.

For those who don’t know me terribly well and aren’t already bored by this post, I’ll fill in some of the mundane details of my life.

As a teenager, I was very interested in computers, and would often stay up very late working on them. I wasn’t interested in games, but communications. One of the first things I did with my new 80286 computer and 1200 baud modem was open my own bulletin board system (BBS), which allowed people to dial my computer up from their computer, using the phone line, and post messages, download files (ironically, usually games), chat (when I was around), and send private messages.

Before the Internet came into popular use, my BBS was a node of FidoNet, a global network that operated across phone lines around the world (my address was 1:340/36).

I also found high school exceptionally boring, so much so that I barely graduated. They’d always enroll me in special classes for smart kids (or smart asses, in my case), but I’m fairly certain I never once applied myself. I had a C- in English 12, due primarily to the fact that classes began at 7:45am, so I missed about a third of them.

After high school I took an operations job with a medical software company and worked my way up the ladder there. I quit after a few years to take Political Science and History in college (I even took an English placement test, which ironically allowed me to skip the first English composition class, despite almost failing English 12). I went for one semester, but was given an opportunity to go back to my previous employer. The offer was for far more than what I might have earned with a PoliSci degree, so I dropped college and went back to work.

In 2000, I made a strategic exit from that company to start my own web company, and have been doing that ever since.

Let me be clear: I am not anti-education. Far from it, I am an enthusiastic supporter! I am often invited as a guest speaker for business students, and often work with people in my community to support the local University. I have a tonne of respect for anybody with an MBA, a Masters Degree, or a Doctorate – they clearly have a hell of a lot more patience than me!

So when people ask about my alma mater, life experience is my response.

BBS, Bill Gates, College Dropout, Education, FidoNet, History, linkedin, Political Science

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The “Other” Paul Holmes

Posted by Paul Holmes in humour, personal on September 27, 2009

Every once in awhile I get an e-mail for another Paul Holmes. The most famous one is a noted broadcaster from New Zealand. He sounds very interesting, it might be fun to meet him one day.

Today I had an e-mail from somebody who wanted to interview this New Zealand Paul Holmes for a book she is working on. Very exciting stuff, indeed, and supporting a very worthy cause too.

Here was my response:

Sometimes I really wish this other Paul Holmes guy wasn’t so famous. There’s another Paul Holmes in Great Britain (he’s the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield, wherever that is).

I’m not a politician or broadcaster. Just a computer geek, blogger, and social media educator (http://twitter.com/tpholmes). But one day my fame will eclipse that of any other Paul Holmes who came before!!!!!

All the best with the book, and that other Paul Holmes. You seem nice, I hope he doesn’t snub you.

Sincerely,
The most famous Paul Holmes in all of Canada

P.S. In Canada, a Chesterfield is another name for a couch/sofa. Is it the same in New Zealand?

P.P.S. I have some great stories from people who have mistaken me for this other Paul Holmes in the past.

I sure hope I make a new pen pal from this.

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Swan Lake

Posted by Paul Holmes in music, personal, photography on May 11, 2009

One of the most beautiful places in the world is Swan Lake. It is an amazing urban ecological reserve right in the heart of Saanich, the most populous municipality in Greater Victoria.

I had the privilege of spending my early years living just down the street from this place, from about age 3 to 8, and though we live a bit further away now, I enjoy every minute I spend there with my son, who is now at the same age I was then.

Swan Lake wasn’t always loved, and wasn’t always preserved. In fact, with years of neglect, it became something akin to an urban dump, the wildlife were abandoning it, and there was talk of filling it in and developing the land. Through the heroic efforts of a vocal few, it was preserved, and remains today as a tribute to what can be in a well-balanced urban setting.

Please consider supporting the ongoing efforts of the Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary by joining my wife and I at the Birds Of A Feather Flock Together event on Saturday, May 23, 7:30 p.m.

event, photography, swan lake

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