Simon G's Blog

John Battelle raised a discussion on his blog on the connection between Twitter and Facebook for status updates , and that Twitter is a Facebook Application but Facebook is not a Twitter application (but should be). I totally agree. I update my Facebook status with my Twitter updates and have found that it has generated some good discussions on Facebook. This is however a one way update and conversations do not span across both systems which is not ideal. I predominantly have a different set of people on Facebook than Twitter, so find that sharing the status works well for invigorating discussion. It would however be nice to be having one conversation, and not conversations independently on each platform. The thread based approach of comments on Facebook aids in providing more structure that Twitter could benefit from, and for conversations to nicely span across both platforms, I think this needs to be addressed. Between this and Facebook Connect, I think there is a solution if the v...

The end of my Summer vacation has come to an end, but it is interesting to think back on how this holiday was different from others, primarily due to the use of Social Media. Social Media applications are based around the concept of user-generated content and include the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Photo sharing and Review sites, all of which I utilised this holiday period. We spent the holiday period in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand in a few different locations (the Waikato, Whitianga, Napier & Taupo). At these locations we often did not know what restaurants and cafes were good, so other than just using the Internet for what to do in an area, we used http://dineout.co.nz (a restaurant/cafe review site with user-generated content) extensively to validate or find what restaurants and cafes we wanted to try. I also submitted my own reviews for a large number of the places we visited to dineout (see here for my reviews). Jane & I also wrote a number of ...

Twitter is the one social networking / micro-blogging / status update service that I fully embraced this year and used extensively. At Web 2.0 Summit in October 2007, there was a lot of talk about Twitter, so I thought I really should give it a go, and once I got into it I was hooked. I often describe Twitter as being like the status update feature on Facebook and you can choose to follow other people's or companies status updates and to restrict who sees yours (if you want). I, in fact, also have my status update in Facebook automatically whenever I update it in Twitter (except for when I am replying to somebody else). First off, Twitter is FREE to use. They are looking at various Revenue models, but the base service is expected to be free for the foreseeable future. Twitter is based around the simple question of "What are you going?". In response to this you can only use 140 characters . Whilst you can just answer this question, most people use it as a way to ...

The world of technology (in particular) is moving very fast. I used to surf the web looking for what was new on key sites, but then decided that I would rather have the information come to me rather than me having to stumble across it. I then subscribed to lots of mailing lists, but once RSS feeds arrived this enabled access to even more information in a manner that meant I wasn't drowning my Inbox (or having to set up numerous auto-filter rules), so I stopped subscribing to the vast majority of mailing lists. For the past year I have been using Twitter and RSS feeds as key methods for keeping up with what's going on. I now wonder what next year will bring and how Semantic Web technologies will change relevant information makes its way to me. The key methods I recall adopting for the past few years in terms of keeping up with what's going on: 2006 2007 2008 Daily Surfing the Web, in particular: Computerworld Slashdot Aardvark TheServerSide.com TheServerSide.NET Mailin...

Within the last week I have started using Yammer , a version of Twitter designed for companies. Yammer is based around the question of “What are you working on?” and the concept of only allowing users from the company's domain (e.g. domain.co.nz) to signup. This provides for an interesting closed community where people are willing to ask questions and have discussions that would not be appropriate to a public community (e.g. "Simon and I are hitting the ABC requirements hard this month... any suggestions/recommendations?"). It has been interesting to watch the viral infiltration of Yammer throughout the company. As people register they are prompted to enter in who they work with @domain ; an email is then sent to these people requesting them to register. Similarly a user can add Org Chart information such as boss, staff, assistant and these people will be sent an invitation to register. Unfortunately the invites are currently marked as Spam by our email system so m...