Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

FollowFriday – Friday, March 19, 2010

Friday, March 19th, 2010
FollowFriday : On any given Friday, thousands upon thousands (maybe even millions) of Twitter users enter the hashtag #FollowFriday (or #FF), followed by one or more “mentions.” The idea is for users to share the names of other “interesting people” that they follow and think you should too. These recommendations serve as positive comment cards for the digitally inclined.

JumpstartMyPC.com has decided to bring FollowFriday to our blog. Read on and, if you are so inclined, add these “interesting people” to your own list.

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FollowFriday – Friday, March 12, 2010

Friday, March 12th, 2010
FollowFriday : On any given Friday, thousands upon thousands (maybe even millions) of Twitter users enter the hashtag #FollowFriday (or #FF), followed by one or more “mentions.”  The idea is for users to share the names of other “interesting people” that they follow and think you should too. These recommendations serve as positive comment cards for the digitally inclined.

JumpstartMyPC.com has decided to bring FollowFriday to our blog.  Read on and, if you are so inclined, add these “interesting people” to your own list.

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Convert Your Gmail Ad Space to a Contact Info Sidebar

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Every once in a while, I stumble onto a product that just makes life easier.  Rapportive, defined as a social CRM tool for Gmail, is the most recent add-on to find it’s way onto my PC.  Rapportive (available for Firefox and Chrome users) replaces the advertising space in individual emails with up-to-date social networking contact information on the people you correspond with.

My first thought was “this looks like XOBNI for Gmail” and, according to the comments and feedback I have read on this product, I am not alone. XOBNI is another fantastic tool, but unfortunately is only available for Outlook users, and a product that I have missed terribly since switching from Outlook to Gmail.  Both of these products make it very easy to see what social networking services your friends, family and even customers are using.

Once installed, the social networking information on the person/company that emailed you appears out to the right of an open email.  Icons (with links) are provided for services like Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc.  Simply click on any of these to open the profile page of that individual in a new tab.  Below the links you will find a comment area that you can use for keeping track of customers, but I am sure individuals will find some other creative and unique ideas for this space.

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Utilizing Technology to Spread Awareness – MS Awareness Week 2010

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

How would you use technology to promote awareness?  This week (March 8-14, 2010) is MS Awareness week!  Over the remaining six days of this event, the MS Society hopes to spread information about multiple sclerosis to the general public.  Educating the public about this chronic, often disabling disease will help bring in new volunteers, donations and eventually a cure for MS.  Through this article, I hope to explore the ways I am using technology to send a message and I ask that you provide me with any feedback and/or ideas you have.

I was lucky enough to be part of a volunteer task force, created to implement a viral campaign for MS Awareness Week, and I found it both interesting and enlightening that the focus was on using social media to spread the word.  Our discussions and meetings were filled with terms like social media, networking, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  The very things that the average computer user spends doing every day.  For anyone interested in helping to find a cure for MS (or any other cause for that matter), these tools provide a valuable way of spreading information in a fun, engaging way.

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@LovelyButton: How 1 Tweet Changed a Young Girl’s Life

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Friday afternoon, around 3pm (CST), a simple 130 character message was sent out to the Twitter world.  This simple tweet, one of millions sent out that hour, set in motion a series of events that would forever change a young girl’s life and made for a very entertaining weekend.  The message (shown below) was sent out by none-other than Conan O’Brien, who recently began his own Twitter account (@ConanOBrien) and amassed over 500,000 followers in record time.

Conan's Tweet About His New Friend Sarah

What makes this tweet so unique is that it was Conan’s first follow.  Until that point, Conan had only posted a handful of tweets, and had established a giant audience (580,000 followers) that was anxiously waiting to see what he would do next.  What many of us did not realize is Conan had not followed a single person to that point.  It is as if Conan had announced a new show, built a beautiful new set, filled the seats with thousands of fans and only done his opening monologue.  It took several weeks for him to announce his first guest on this new stage…. LovelyButton.

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FollowFriday – Friday, March 05, 2010

Friday, March 5th, 2010
FollowFriday : On any given Friday, thousands upon thousands (maybe even millions) of Twitter users enter the hashtag #FollowFriday (or #FF), followed by one or more “mentions.”   The idea is for users to share the names of other “interesting people” that they follow and think you should too.  These recommendations serve as positive comment cards for the digitally inclined.

JumpstartMyPC.com has decided to bring FollowFriday to our blog.  Read on and, if you are so inclined, add these “interesting people” to your own list.

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Google Buzz – A Look at the Lite Side of Social Networking

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Social Networking is the heart of the internet right now.  Scratch that, social networking is much, much bigger.  Terms like Facebook, Twitter, share, social, follow, fan, etc. are hurled at us, at the speed of light, both online and offline.  Every individual and company (including JumpstartMyPC.com) is trying to figure out the “best” way to share information with fans, friends and family.  And now, Google has stepped up to the plate with their offering… Google Buzz.

I realize that many of you have already been exposed to Google Buzz, or at least heard the name, and that this article might seem a little untimely.  After all, Google Buzz was released about a month ago (February 9, 2010).  The reason I waited to comment on Google Buzz was two-fold: 1) The initial reaction to Google Buzz was panic! (early issues with privacy) and 2) I wasn’t sure if I would even use Buzz for personal and/or business updates.  Why would I review or recommend a product for the JumpstartMyPC.com audience if it (Buzz) wasn’t a useful tool that would help you get more out of your PC?  Well, I finally spent some time with this new application and I think I’ve wrapped my mind around it.

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ShareThis Adds New Features and Makes Easy even Easier

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

“Sharing” has to be one of the biggest buzz words of the internet over the last few years.  With the introduction of services like email, instant messaging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and now Google Buzz, people have been provided with the tools for staying in contact with friends and family continuously.  These services are used mostly for staying in touch, catching up on recent personal events and chatting but they have also introduced one of the most used functions of our day, sharing.  People share photos, videos, links to web sites, links to music, favorite articles… the list goes on forever.  “Sharing is the center of the social web.”1

In the beginning, digital sharing was done via email.  Attachments were sent and frustrations elevated when emails were not received or “kicked back” because the attachments were too large.  Sharing methods have evolved and changed over time and we are now inundated with hundreds of ways to share information with one another.  Facebook and Twitter are by far the most popular, but many others have great feature sets and large followings.  Only one service pulls them all together seamlessly, ShareThis.  That little green button (the trademark of ShareThis) has made it’s way onto 130,000+ sites and reaches over 400 million users per month.

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FollowFriday – a Twitter Tradition Brought to the Blog

Friday, February 26th, 2010

On any given Friday, thousands upon thousands (maybe even millions) of Twitter users enter the hashtag #FollowFriday (or #FF), followed by one or more “mentions.”  While you don’t really need to know much about Twitter, hashtags or mentions (foreign terms to anyone unfamiliar with Tweeting), you might be interested in the concept of FollowFriday.  The idea is for users to share the names of other “interesting people” that they follow and think you should too.  These recommendations serve as positive comment cards for the digitally inclined.

A Twitter Search Shows How Popular #FollowFriday is

FollowFriday is a fantastic concept and I have decided to free it of it’s Twitter chains, or at least “borrow.”  Here at JumpstartMyPC.com, we try to provide you with any information that helps you get the most out of your computer and we often do this in the form of reviews, how-to’s and links within our articles.   In some cases, the site, person or service that we want to share doesn’t really lend itself to a full article, so we will use this FollowFriday concept as a way of highlighting the interesting people, places and things that you should know about or be following yourself.

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With Location-Aware, Thieves Know When to Move In

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

With all of the social networking tools available today, it is easy to get wrapped up in the fun of it all and forget about the basic rules of life.  One of the biggies – Don’t announce to the world that you are not home.  Unfortunately, people are happily volunteering this information (along with plenty of other personal tidbits) to the entire world without understanding the potential dangers of doing so.  Social media sites/tools are making it increasingly easier for thieves to track your moves and know when you are not home.  A great new site PleaseRobMe.com pokes a bit of fun at the phenomenon and aims to educate the masses by showing what NOT to do.

“Listing all those empty homes out there” is the tagline for PleaseRobMe.com and categories like “Recent Empty Homes” are used to demonstrate the dangers of location-aware services.  Location-aware services is a broad term that basically means any software, device or site that allows you to share your current geographical location with others.  There are a lot of advantages to sharing your location (mostly social) but users should understand the dangers associated with broadcasting your whereabouts.  Mainly, telling people you are at point X means you are not at home, thus making your home a target for thieves.

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