Stay networked. Get informed. Broadcast your projects.

Only for those who are on Facebook and Twitter!

Hello, friends! I was off for five days with my girlfriend in South Italy (Capri, Positano and Amalfi) and now returned fully recharged! I posted a couple of pics at my open album on Facebook

From the next days you will hear more from my experiments with social media. For example, I decided to embrace Facebook and Twitter.

WHY? You may be asking.

Well, since 2005 when I started hearing about this I was skeptical and thought it was addictive and a timewaster with bad privacy architecture.

1. Early adopter phase is gone
Well, as I realize now, I am the type of person who is just not the "early adopter" type. Do not get me wrong, I LOVE technology. But I also value a lot my time. So I do not want to subscribe to all new killer app/service that pops every 5 minutes, use it for one week and then forget about it when the hype is gone.

2. Twitter and Facebook are different and complement each other
So. As I see things today, Twitter is a wonderful aggregator/hub for contacts and Facebook is highly customizable so you can choose different privacy levels and add different social spheres (family, work and even ex-girlfriends haha) all together - with little drama.

3. The value of the network
Plus, there is that guy. Metcalfe. The more people are in a particular network, the higher is the value.

4. Privacy
Being a Gen-X man, I see the differences of online behavior compared to Gen-Y and the tendency for a transparent life and the benefits it generates. At the same time, I also like to keep certain things more intimate and apparently Facebook allows for such customization decently enough. It just takes 10 mins to learn how to create groups and then manage the access levels of each one.

5. Time waste
This is the biggest one. I have always frowned upon those who were addicted to Facebook or Twitter, as if they did not have a real life.

Are you a Twitter Whore?

The funny thing is, we always have a choice. It's about managing ourselves better and make it a useful tool at our service, and not the opposite.

I have just started with this, but as far as I can see I plan to schedule some short 10 min slots along my day to go and check my Twitter and Facebook and the eventual emails I may still get. After it is done, get back to single-tasking with "real work". I have been trying different productivity approaches and will report here what has worked best for me.

Am I trying to sell Facebook or Twitter to you?
More or less. I am talking with enthusiasm because it seems it will bring a lot of good things for my life and to people I care. BUT, I know that no matter how convincing or enthused we try to be... if one does not want to embrace or give a try... nothing works.

Really. If someone would try to play "social media evangelist" in front of me half year ago, I would still be skeptic.

So, what is working for me today may perfectly not be the case for you at this moment.

This is why the title of this post is "Only for those who are on Facebook and Twitter": if you are already experimenting with Twitter and Facebook, do reply on this thread so it becomes easier to add and follow your musings, passions and projects.

Then on a next round I will be happy to talk to you who are not yet here with us on the social media playground.

Basta. Long post, sorry.

Here are my contacts:

http://www.twitter.com/SeiitiArata

http://www.facebook.com/seiiti

See you there! Will write more about this soon as I continue learning.

P.S. so, you can reply with a comment to this post with either your Twitter name or Facebook url... or both! Let's strengthen our links!

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Comment by Seiiti on July 28, 2009 at 12:43pm: Twitter for Business 101 guide:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/how-to-use-twitter-f...

Comment by Seiiti on July 25, 2009 at 10:50am: About using DMs instead of the @ reply on twitter:
http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2009/07/9-reasons-why-i-prefer-to-dm-y...

Comment by Seiiti on July 22, 2009 at 11:35am: I also like this article from Read Write Web: http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/07/three-steps-to-b...

Comment by Seiiti on July 22, 2009 at 11:34am: Thanks Janna! Excellent advice!

Comment by Janna Anderson on July 18, 2009 at 3:11pm: Facebook and Twitter are especially powerful and beneficial in terms of personal and professional networking and also in terms of getting cutting-edge information. I strongly endorse them as tools for today. It is important to develop a personal "brand name" online. One way is to build a Google Profile page that helps people locate you and differentiate you from others.
This is my Google profile page (on the upper right side are the links to my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts) - http://www.google.com/profiles/janna.quitney.anderson

Comment by Seiiti on July 16, 2009 at 11:05am: and you may also want to check how companies are using twitter

http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/best-twitter-brands/

Comment by Seiiti on July 16, 2009 at 10:32am: excellent advice from Tim Ferriss on using Twitter:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/02/25/how-to-use-twitter...

Comment by Sheraan Amod on July 15, 2009 at 7:22pm: Hi Seiiti, good luck with your foray into real-time social networking. Being an early adopter and social media evangelist, I've been actively using Facebook, Twitter, and other tools for a long time. I encourage you, and the other friends in our network to connect with me. Here are my links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sheraan
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sheraan
Delicious: http://delicious.com/sheraan
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sheraanamod

I also have a basic personal site that makes it easier for people to find me in the social web, the address is: http://sheraanamod.com.

Comment by Fernando José Capeletto Neto on July 15, 2009 at 4:13pm: Hi Seiiti and colleagues.
I agree what any tech can be useful or timewaster depending how we use, who we follow (or add as a friend), and what community we join.
For twitter, using gadgets like twitterfox (firefox addon who puts a left column on browser just transmiting your following twitter timeline) will help to increase productivity without mean lack of time (if you use twitter as convencional regular web page, i agree this is few efficient because interrupts your world web navegation with same 'tab')

But finding a good way to admin all these networks is highly useful because integrating they, you mixes all contacts and all boundaries off all networks.
And a goodway to do this is crossing references (via RSS) between one networks to another. (using twitter and/or friendfeed to agregate this timelines in one only).

The bad privacy arch on twitter is an advantage because encourage users to conduct public and i reccomend a free course about Connectvism and Connective Knowledge , where i learned and exchange experiences with other colleagues about many of this networks instruments.

Using last year experience on this course i started to do my professional page using a lot of connective data components between these networks.
(On www.fjc.eng.br allmost everything is gadglets or rss or flickr or delicious or bridge for other networks (including ning networks like our diplo ning)

Look at these links, the course have free content and isnt a web centric course:

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=20 (for cck08)

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/ (enroll instructions cck09)

And my links there:

www.twitter.com.br/fjcapeletto (me and my activities on other nets via rss)
www.twitter.com.br/net_fjcapeletto (my network groupwork activities, via rss (colleagues on delicious, rss on all nings networks wich i joined, i. e.)
http://www.facebook.com/fjcapeletto

Im already added you there. (on twitter! but in facebook i cant yet, i dont find you there, maybe because this profile facebook url dont works very well for new users... if you can find me before, add me please)

Comment by Seiiti on July 15, 2009 at 3:17pm: Here is what David Allen, productivity expert, says on Twitter: http://www.davidco.com/podcasts/play/25.html

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