exploring a world of possibilities
Enterprise 2.0
Connect Twitter to Socialcast [how to]
22 years ago
Yammer and Socialcast are two services that provide Twitter-like capabilities based on corporate email addresses. The idea is that you can communicate in short messages that are accessible only to individuals within your organization. Using groups, you can reproduce your organization’s workforce structure and augment communication methods like email, phone, and chat.
The advantage to these services is that colleagues within an organization can converse asynchronously and share ideas that, if shared publicly on Twitter, could result in a loss of intellectual capital or business opportunities.
I currently use various hashtags to repost from Twitter to Facebook (#fb), LinkedIn (#in), and Yammer (#yam). In this way, I can post to multiple platforms, depending on which circles I want to share content. I haven’t determined the appreciable differences between the two platforms, but to adequately test Socialcast, I needed to find a way to connect my Twitter account.
I was surprised not to find instructions on the Socialtext site. It took a bit of searching, but I came upon a post on getsatisfaction which provided some bare-bones instructions. Based on those instructions, I created this detailed tutorial.
Is anybody reading this? Tweak your WordPress home page to get better traffic data. [Part 2 of 2]
02 years ago
This is part two of a two-part series on improving WordPress blog traffic statistics. In Part 1 I explained how to set the RSS feed settings to drive users from an RSS reader to your site. In Part 2, I explain how to use the “more” tag in WordPress to drive users from your home page to the specific post.
Many WordPress blogs are set up to show a few to dozens of full posts on the blog’s home page. This seemingly makes it easier for readers to read the last several posts without adding another “click” to dig deeper into the site.
But if a user scans through the posts, reading some and ignoring others, there is no way to indicate which posts he found useful. By tweaking your WordPress home page, you can dramatically improve your website traffic statistics.
Is anybody reading this? Tweak WordPress RSS settings to get better traffic data. [Part 1 of 2]
22 years ago
This is part one of a two-part series on improving WordPress blog traffic statistics.
If you blog for any reason beyond self-reflection (i.e., talking to yourself), you’re probably interested in how many readers you get. You may be a professional blogger looking to gather data to garner sponsors or advertisers or you may blog on a social enterprise platform and are looking to “demonstrate an ROI” for your blogging efforts (these are the folks I work with). Either way, one simple tweak of the WordPress subscription (RSS) settings can dramatically improve your website traffic statistics.
Social media blackout at Harrisburg U? Bad idea…
02 years ago
Some ideas are just plain bad.
According to Inside Higher Ed, the provost of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (in Harrisburg, PA) is pulling the plug on popular social media sites for one week at his college. This “experiment” – I use the term loosely as he has no control or defined parameters – is intended to find out…what, exactly?
For a school centered around technology and at which social media is wholeheartedly embraced and used, this seems like an odd activity to pursue. In addition, the provost chose to block the following sites: Facebook, AIM, Twitter, and Myspace. In addition, he has ordered the collaborative functionality of the internal learning management system to be disabled.
W.T.H.? (what the heck?)
I’m by no means alone in my confusion about this story. A writer at Crunchgear offers these observations on why this study is doomed to fail:
- Smartphones. “ Provost surely recognizes that much of the social web is accessible via smartphone, and text messages have largely replaced instant messenger applications”
- Filter failure. “…blocking all social access…isn’t really even possible except by eliminating internet access altogether.”
In addition, I’ve come up with just a few more reasons to abandon this useless study:
- Ethics. How often do you hear of experiments where the “test subjects” do not give their consent?
- Out of touch. Why choose those social networks? If recent surveys are any indication, kids don’t use Twitter, Facebook is rapidly becoming passé, and MySpace is basically moot. And AIM? Really?!
- Productivity. By disabling the Moodle learning management system, the Provost is taking away effective work tools…and during the beginning of the semester when communication and organization is most needed!
- Disrupting business. You can bet that at a technology-centric college, there are more than a few students who have thriving online businesses. Businesses that probably rely on social media engagement. This “experiment” could negatively impact real-world moneymaking.
What am I missing here? Is there some redemptive aspect of this idea? What other “studies” have you come across that seem to completely miss the mark?
Lost & found: silver screen gems rediscovered
02 years ago
Two recent NPR stories caught my attention for how they speak to a pervasive problem plaguing organizations like mine: loss of organizational history.
One story is about “Bruce,” the name given to the three giant fake sharks used in the movie Jaws. After the filming concluded, all three models were lost and most likely destroyed. After all, you can’t keep every movie prop for sentimental reasons, right? Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and so, years later, the efforts of a determined journalist finally paid off. After coordinating tips from a dedicated Jaws fan community, a fourth shark made from the same mold as the movie models was found in a California auto yard. Used as a prop at the Universal Studios Theme Park in Hollywood, this 25-foot-long behemoth was sorely weathered. But Jaws fans can finally rejoice that a key piece of Americana has been found.
A similar story revealed that 75 silent films were recovered from the New Zealand Film Archive. One such film is a 1927 feature called Upstream by four-time Oscar-winning director John Ford. These early American movies were sent to remote areas of the globe late in their lifecycle. The physical films degraded quickly and, since they were shipped in heavy metal cans, distributors in the States thought it financially wise to abandon them rather than pay to ship them back. However, projectionists and collectors thankfully protected them until they found their way to the vaults of the New Zealand national archive.
Both of these stories are examples where the value of something – films and film props – wasn’t realized until years after they were lost. And, while I can understand how financial limitations prevented preserving a giant shark and dozens of classic films, the same doesn’t apply to expert knowledge and experience. These types of “artifacts” are easy to preserve, especially with the availability of social enterprise tools like blogs.
So I have two questions for you…
Can you think of a project or area of expertise you worked on years ago that has since been lost because the knowledge wasn’t captured properly?
What can you do – today – to prevent repeating this mistake?