Tag Archives: social networks

Wow.

That’s a big number, especially when you consider that most people think of LinkedIn as the “boring” social network. They’re not wrong. When I teach a class on social networking, I include LinkedIn. But I also stress that it’s very professional, unlike Facebook, and that most people aren’t posting status updates about their cat on LinkedIn.

Where are these 50 million connections? According Jeff Weiner on the LinkedIn blog,

LinkedIn has been global since inception — about half of our total membership is international.  There are now 11 million users in Europe alone. India is currently our fastest-growing country with almost 3 million users, while the Netherlands has the highest rate of adoption per capita outside the U.S., at 30%.

I bet that’s not surprising to you. It’s certainly not to me. Personally, I use LinkedIn to track potential jobs and clients, as well as research potential jobs and clients. You can learn a lot about a company based on who used to work there. Additionally, I try to answer several Questions on their Q&A pages on a regular basis. It never hurts to be known as an expert in something.  I list it on my business cards as well – it’s an instant resume where I control the amount of information that’s viewable. LinkedIn is, in my opinion, sort of like Old Reliable. It doesn’t frighten social media newbies (and yes, they’re out there) as much as Facebook and I can trust that it will probably be around for a while.

Do you still use LinkedIn or do you find it has outlasted it’s usefulness?

I’m a big fan of BlogHer and I’m speaking on a panel at their Chicago conference this summer. So I was thrilled to hear that the organization “for women who blog” has grabbed a third round of funding for $7 Million. The new round is financed by two current investors, Venrock and the Peacock Equity, and new investor Azure Capital.

BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone told Boomtown that

“This is a true grassroots effort that is shows that growing influence women in social media,” said Stone. “We want to focus on taking advantage of that growth and momentum with this new funding…We have been trying to create a place for women to participate in social media with civil respect and also to engage readers.

BlogHer was founded in 2005 by Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins. They run their popular conferences, including the large bi-coastal BlogHer and the traveling BlogHer Business events, as well as an advertising network and the social networking site.

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Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

Everybody has growing pains.

Nielsen is reporting that while Twitter is growing, it is also suffering in the retention category. Where’s the user loyalty?

A couple of weeks ago, I speculated about the Oprah effect – that thousands would join and those accounts would then lie dormant after a month. It seems I’m not that far off on how users react to Twitter in general. According to Nielsen,

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.

When I teach Twitter (and for that matter, all social media), I stress that you get out of it what you put into it. What Twitter does poorly is demonstrate how to effectively use the tool. From the question (What are you doing?) to the interaction, it is just not always clear to a Twitter – and Internet – newbie.

I’ve long thought that Twitter should change their question. What are you doing? is not the question people are answering. They’re letting you know where they are, what is new, what is interesting, and where they need help or are offering help. The very question confuses people and causes skeptics to call Twitter silly because they don’t want to know when someone is refilling a coffee pot.

The problem with Twitter is that you have to use it to truly understand it. You can’t just lurk and read other people’s tweets coming in on your feed. You need to participate. Twitter actually loses some value if you don’t join the conversation. Of course, how to join the conversation is also a problem. Even if you find people to follow, how will they know you are talking to them? I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time explaining D (not DM) and @ to people who are new to Twitter. After all, it’s hard to contribute if no one can hear you talk.

So, my advice to all those Oprah, Ashton, and Ellen followers – find someone else to follow. Search on your favorite topics, see who is chatting about them, and follow those folks. Follow many folks. Then join the conversation. Don’t just sit back and read – contribute. Use the @ symbol  and get to it. Again, you get out of Twitter what you put into it. Joining any social network isn’t going to expand your horizons or even just brighten your day if you don’t participate.

In this case, the onus is on both the new users to participate as well as Twitter, who needs to make things clearer and easier. They’re moving past just early adopters using the system. It’s time to release some tutorials and some demos so that Twitter really can be mainstream – and keep those new users who followed Oprah.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

It’s a day for numbers, I suppose. Earlier today, someone created the 1 millionth social network on Ning. Ning is the “build your own social network” site started by Marc Andreesen over two years ago. C|Net’s numbers state that “Ning has 22 million registered users, about 6.1 million of whom are considered active. Out of the million networks, about a fifth are currently active.” (I suspect people build networks as experiments, but don’t act on them.)

This makes me happy. Ning has made my life infinitely easier. I run a non-profit on the side and creating a social network on Ning was our best bet for a web site. It kept me from having to spend time coding and designing and instead, I could dive more into the content. Over the last year, our Ning site has improved because the offerings from Ning have improved as well. For my non-profit, I literally am running a mini-Facebook.

The same applies to the rather impressive Open Wine Consortium, of which I’m a member, and many of the other niche social networks on Ning. I love the way Ning allows people to gather together around a single subject. Alternatively, it also works as a basic web site for our family site – pulling in RSS feeds, photos, videos, and more. I’m debating on moving my main business web site to Ning, because the tech support is excellent and the features are better than what I could feasibly build on my own.

So congratulations to Ning – 1 million networks strong.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

Facebook is making changes all over the place. Let’s start with your personal profile page, which will see some changes in the very near future.

As a user, you will now have more control over what you see. You can institute filters (right-hand side) and choose not to see stories from that high school acquaintance you barely remember, but see more stories from family members. You’ll also be able to see what’s happening on your favorite Fan pages right within your stream. You can currently tour the upcoming changes.

Now, if you happen to own a “Fan Page” or brand profile, those pages are changing as well. They’ll now have all the same options as a personal profile page. As far as I can tell, the huge advantage to this is that your fans will now see your updates in their own stream. Yesterday, a number of big name brands went live with their pages, including U2.

You can see the new use of tabs, as well as the Stream tab. There is also a publisher option, which includes status updates for your Fan Page. Soon, the brand profiles will also have the ability to have more than 5,000 friends. You can add tabs to your brand profile. For instance, I added Events, Photos, and Discussion tabs to a non-profit page I run. Updates are becoming real-time, as Facebook is also speeding up the information that fills everyone’s news feeds.

In the past, someone would join a Fan page, but that was often the end of the interaction. With the new ability to have Fan Page activities streamed into a live feed, marketers have a new and authentic way to communicate with, well, Fans. According to Facebook, “Facebook users can easily make connections, comment on posted content and join the online conversations with the famous via their public profiles – just as they can with a family member, friend or colleague.”  Hmm … that sounds very Twitter-like to me.

Public (Fan Page) changes aren’t live yet, but you can go ahead and implement the changes in your own brand profile if you have one. If not, Facebook will make the changes for you in the near future.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net