Randy Cassingham's Blog

I'm a busy guy, but I've decided to make time for "social media" -- in my case, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. For your interest, especially for those who don't quite "get" why I'd bother, I thought I'd outline how I use the services I've chosen to pay attention to.

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Let's start with Twitter. Here are some of my more interesting Twitter "Tweets" from this week:

• "Abstinence works: let's talk about it!" Bizarre, freaky, astounding #WEIRDnews http://ow.ly/iUB1 ("no-no square"?!)

  (The # denotes a "hashtag", a way of sorting/finding tweets on specific topics, like #weirdnews, the #iPhone, etc.)

• How Big-Brotherish can the UK get? Extremely: http://ow.ly/iUCE

  (I forgot to put #weirdnews on that one...)

• Coooooool! 30m Telescope to Be Built in Hawaii http://ow.ly/iYCX #space
• Wolfram Alpha takes rather interesting copyright stance (cut and paste = no no) http://ow.ly/j4G5
• First (August 1967) image of "Full Earth", taken by moon-bound spacecraft, recovered http://bit.ly/dGJgR #nasa
• Fabulous essay. How many marriages could have been saved? (NYT) http://bit.ly/2K5vy

My Main Attention: Twitter and Facebook

I use Twitter to send out brief things of interest, usually with a link to a full article (a shortened link, with Ow.ly or Bit.ly, for instance, because space really counts on Twitter) -- around 3-7 items per day. "Tweets" (I really hate that word!) are necessarily brief; no interest in that item? It's so short it's easy to skip, whether it's from me or anyone else you might choose to follow.

I rarely copy Tweets to Facebook; there, I post items of more universal interest to friends or readers, and it's around an item or two a week, including notice of new blog posts, like this one! :-) (Blog post links are one of the few things I put on both Twitter and Facebook.)

I actually have two Twitter accounts: one for TRUE/general interest, and one for the Get Out of Hell Free cards, where I post about anything related to GOOHF products (of course!) There isn't much of that, so the account is kept active by a pithy daily quotation about hell and related topics, just for fun.

And there are three different places on Facebook, too: my main account is where I post mostly personal stuff (and I do accept friend linking requests from readers).

Second is a True fan page where I post around an item a week, which also allows you to comment or post your own items of interest to other fans.

If you're interested in me personally, friend me. If you're simply interested in True as a publication, "become a fan" of the fan page. But you'll see some duplication if you do both, so the latter is probably the best single action. And, third...

GOOHF has a fan page for similar GOOHF-related interactions.

Also Worth Considering: LinkedIn

Last is LinkedIn, where (WARNING!) I only accept links from people I know personally and have worked with in some capacity, which is why I'm not including the link here. (Why "WARNING"? Because if you ask to link with people there, and they click that they don't know you, you'll be banned from LinkedIn! I've heard it only takes three "don't know thems" before you're banned. So don't even consider trying to buddy up there to, oh, say, Steve Wozniak, unless he's going to recognize who the heck you are and will want to link with you.) LinkedIn is a great site for job networking, which is pretty important in this economy. Being self-employed, I'm not needing to network with old colleagues to find a job, so why do I bother? Because I want to be a resource for my old colleagues so they can stay employed. But if I ever thought I'd be in the job market again, I'd definitely spend more time on LinkedIn.

Watching Your Time Commitment

It all sounds time-consuming, doesn't it? Indeed it can be, but it doesn't have to be, if you are careful. And I am! I breeze into Facebook a couple of times during the day. Any "friend" you're not interested in, you can "hide" in your "news" feed, and thus concentrate only on your "real" friends or colleagues. I do that regularly; I only see posts from a very select few, but for those I am interested in, it's fantastic networking. (You can also "unfriend" anyone you want, too. I only do that when people are abusive with "inviting" me to do things I have no interest in, like "Vote on this!" or "Post your opinion on that!" over and over -- which means THEY have been doing that, and then allowing the software to access their "friend list" to be abused. That's the main weakness of Facebook, and I won't tolerate it for long from any one person.) See the blog version of this post for a graphic on how to Hide people from your news feed.

How to "hide" people on Facebook Hover your cursor over a post by a friend, and a "Hide" dialogue box will appear in the upper right. Click it to see your options. To unfriend someone, go to their page (click on their name). At the bottom of the left column you'll see a "Remove from Friends" link.

It's the same with Twitter. As I explained in my Twitter Primer in January, I only follow people who I'm actually interested in and want to hear what they have to say. If they keep saying things of interest, I keep reading. If not, I stop following them with no apology or malice, and I expect others to do the same with me. I keep Twitter open in a special window on my desktop all the time (DestroyTwitter), and glance at it now and then; it makes it clear which item(s) you've seen, and which you haven't. Right this second, it shows "4", which means there are 4 tweets I haven't read yet. When I glance over them I'll click on the "4" and they'll be instantly marked as read.

I also use a service called TweetBeep to alert me when anyone posts an item with certain phrases or hashtags of interest. There's both free and Premium levels of service; I've found the free version adequate for my needs.

All told, I probably spend 3-5 hours/week with all of it combined, even though I'm linked up with a lot of people among all of those places -- more than 1,500 followers at Twitter, more than 1,200 "friends" on Facebook (plus nearly 2,000 "fans" on the True page and more than 1,500 on the GOOHF page), and well over 100 old colleagues and friends on LinkedIn. So you can see why I use the provided tools to manage it all! Still, 3-5 hours per week sounds like 10 percent of my time; it's not, since I work about 60 hours/week, not 40. But still, I do consider it to be part of my job. But more importantly to me, it all brings me many items of personal interest, too.

There are definitely other social media/networking sites out there, but those are the ones I've chosen to concentrate on. If I was to choose one, it'd be Facebook if my interest was more personal, and LinkedIn if it was more job-related. Oh, and what about MySpace? That is a waste of time. I've abandoned my page there, as I didn't see much that was interesting or useful, but did see tons of spam. Facebook has blown it out of the water.

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