Category: social networking

social networking posts – twitter, Facebook et al

A Twitter death

I woke up in the middle of the night, took a spin round my phone and noticed that someone I followed on twitter had died.

I had never met this guy but at one time he had been a fairly frequent tweeter and you got his whole life story. He was out of work with a broken marriage. It looked as if he had been prone to aggression and had an alcohol problem. Then he kicked the habit and seemed to be pulling himself together.

At some point he disappeared off my timeline. I didn’t really notice. I follow 1,772 people at the time of writing. A lot of them come and go and many of them hardly tweet at all. Also it doesn’t take much of a change in your personal habits to not be looking when they are tweeting. I don’t try to read all the tweets in my timeline.

So last night when I saw someone mention that he had died it came as a surprise. I took a look at his timeline and he seemed to have gone quiet on social media platforms from around the middle of last summer and he died in the autumn. There was a reference somewhere to intensive care.

I have no idea what the story is. I’m not really interested and it is really none of our businesses. What is interesting is the fact that his life was in some small measure played out online. I have over the past few years been researching my family tree (hence the mention of me buying the History of the Welsh Baptists in a previous post). I’m at a point where there isn’t much to go on. It’s all hard slog in records offices in West Wales.

However any descendant of my twitter friend, indeed your descendants and mine, are likely to have a wealth of information about our day to day lives like never before. In some respects we are planting trees that will only be enjoyed by people that come after us. Much of what I post is private and shared only with the family, which could be an issue downstream. The family is a specific named set of individuals so my details could be closed to 4G grandchildren (for example). This might require some thought re sharing rules but the principle is there and in any case my Twitter timeline is open for anyone to read.

We are also here relying on the continued existence of today’s social media platforms and their data bases far into the future which is by no means a racing certainty.

It doesn’t really matter anyway. I’ve waxed on long enough.

RIP my twitter friend.

Take care now…

End User social networking

Snapchat – get down wiv da kids

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 February, 2014
No Comments on Snapchat – get down wiv da kids

Kid 2 introduced me to Snapchat. Must have been two summers ago when she was about to set off for uni. Other than very occasionally looking at her chats I ignored it.

For one thing it doesn’t keep the photos/videos once sent. I like to keep the photos/vids. I’m a nostalgic.

Recently I saw an article somewhere, BBC maybe, that said the yoof were moving away from Facebook to Snapchat. One of the side benefits, if not the prime motive, was that the media wasn’t stored. More private.

Now my wife uses Snapchat to talk to Kid 4. From her iPhone. Believe you me this is massive progress. Anne doesn’t do Facebook. But she does do Snapchat, now. She also sends texts and occasionally calls people.

I used to think the whole short video/pic thing wasn’t going to take off. I’ve changed my mind.

I also wonder whether the fact that no data is kept (or so we are told) is the way ahead – short termism in extremis. Makes sense considering the way our society is evolving elsewhere. The throwaway society taken to its ultimate conclusion.

Now I think about it how often do I look at any of the photos and videos I store – there are hundreds of Gigabytes of them. Not very often. I’m not going to get rid of them though. It’s a mind set.

When I depart this planet nothing will matter. Photos. Memories. Great deeds. In the meantime I’ve just started using Snapchat. Even though I’ve been “on” the system for 18 months.

One of the surprises having explored what it can’t do is to find that zillions of my contacts are also on Snapchat and there are many chats (snaps?) waiting for me to see. Amazing. Who’d a thought!

Interestingly I was totally ok with allowing Snapchat access to my contacts list whereas I still haven’t upgraded my Facebook App because it was asking for access to my text messages. It’s about trust, innit.

Don’t betray that trust Snapchat, I am about to start using you.

To finish off with an internet technology angle, Snapchat is of course going to be another bandwidth driver. It will use a lot more bandwidth than a Facebook IM or wall post which I imagine is what it replaces.

Onwards and upwards.

PS just sent Anne a Snapchat praising the ham sandwiches in my packup – they were delicious:)

Business social networking

Social media accounts for startups

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 9 January, 2014
2 Comments on Social media accounts for startups

I’ve started to separate personal social media accounts from the blog. Although trefor.net is named after me I want to depersonalise it so that downstream it wont rely on me. I ultimately envisage a small staff of developers and editorial types running the site whilst I swan off to conferences in exotic places, the golf course etc etc.

So far I have separated the google accounts – [email protected] is now a pure play gmail account (if I can put it like that) and have done some work on Twitter. @trefornet is the “official” business twitter handle though not one of those verified jobs you see with a tick – one can but dream 🙂

There is already a trefor.net Facebook page (like it if you will) though it will need some work doing to it and regular post upates. That will come more easily when I have a developer on board.

I have also enabled a Google+ profile for [email protected]. This will need some thought as to modus operandi. Google likes to recognise people rather than businesses. I suspect that we will end up with every bit of content frm the blog being linked to on the trefor.net page but only my own stuff on my personal one. There is already a trefor.net page on Google+ that hasn’t been updated for years.

LinkedIn will also need some work. I’ve updated my profile but will have to give some thought as how best to use it. LinkedIn, which I used to largely ignore as a vehicle for people to get jobs or sell things, is going to become more useful (now that I’m selling things). Networking is the name of the game really, in more ways than one.

Much of the development of the blog will rely on having a developer on board. So far there hasn’t been a rush of applications so I’m going to have to step up the activity levels there. Working out of a business innovation centre in Lincoln this seems to be a common thread. A business these days needs to work online and needs web development skills.

There is a good Computer Science Dept at the University of Lincoln so it isn’t as if there isn’t a supply of grads out there. Lots of students would like to stay in the town where they went to University if they could. They typically associate the location with having a good time. At least that’s how it was in my day :). Next week I’m going to pop round and have a chat with the prof. He’s just round the corner from the office.

The whole social media thing is important because this site needs to be a living organism, interacting with its readers in many ways. What’s more by “embedding” itself in social networks we will know more about the readers although I’m totally cool with people using anonymised credential when leaving comments. The value of a business lies with its customers and whilst they aren’t paying for anything,the readers are in fact customers.

As Trefor Davies over the years I have built up a reasonable sized network of contacts using social media. Trefor.net the business is tarting from scratch although obviously there is going to be a high degree of cross fertilisation to begin with. It will be interesting to see, for example, how the Twitter follower count for @trefornet, currently 0, grows compared with @tref, currently 2,572. @trefornet will be more informational and a feedback channel as opposed to the drivel that @tref often spouts:)

Anyway that’s enough waxing on. Got social media profiles to write etc and I’m off out to lunch at a posh restaurant in Nottingham today so must go.

tata

Tags social media, startup

Business engineering google social networking

Google Apps update – trefor.net is now working

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 8 January, 2014
2 Comments on Google Apps update – trefor.net is now working

Since Monday I’ve been trying to set up a Google Apps for Business account for trefor.net. I kept getting rejected with a message saying that “the domain trefor.net was already in use”.

I was using it via my personal gmail account – picking up trefor.net emails pulled from my Timico POP3 mailbox. Deleted any reference to trefor.net in my personal mailbox then when Google continued to reject my efforts to register a new apps account I discovered you have to wait 24 hours for “things to filter through the system”.

Over 24 hours later it still didn’t work and I made a comment to this effect on Twitter. Twitter is a truly powerful networking tool. @AndyCDoyle offered to help and this lunchtime, having started to raise a ticket with Google, he found that there was already a Google Apps account for trefor.net. Funnily enough it was one I registered meself years ago. I’d totally forgotten about it.

A password reset came through to the recovery email address, my own personal gmail account, and hey presto I was up and running. Ish. It does take time to learn how to navigate your way around and I can see why a business might want to contract the setup out to an IT consultant.

One thing that flummoxed me was that in all the help guides it says you have to verify that the domain is yours. None of the relevant fields appeared on my screen so either I had already done it (certainly don’t recall that which I’m beginning to find out perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise) or when I signed up for Google Apps you didn’t need to do that step. I suspect the former is true.

Setting up email was easy. I just had to modify the Timico hosted zone files so that the MX records pointed at 5 google servers. Once that was done it worked straight away. Simples. I can now add aliases to my heart’s content and because the account was set up before Google started charging it’s all free. Result!

It would appear that I can have up to ten users in the free account which is going to do me for the forseeable future. Not figured out how much storage I get yet but I have over 100GB in my other account thanks to me buying a Chromebook so that should be fine for a couple of years.

I’ve already set up some aliases including one for use in tradeshow registrations that is automatically filtered and archived 😉

Important to make a bit of progress every day and this is progress.

PS As you may have noticed at the top of this post I’m experimenting with new profile pics. Have managed to change my personal gmail pic but struggling with one for the new trefor.net account. Keeps telling me the jpg photo is an invalid file. Google Apps is great for many things but it ain’t perfect and seems to have plenty of bugs that need kluges to work around. Not figured out a kluge for the profile pic yet.

PPS big thanks to Andy Coyle. Was surprised to hear he has a broad Mancunian accent. Shouldn’t have been because he lives in Manchester but that’s Twitter for you. Andy there will be a beer waiting for you when I come up for UKNOF27. Also you might want to think about using his services especially if you are in the Manchester area. His website is here.

Ciao all.

Tags Google Apps, startup

Business social networking

twitter vs phone response times

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 6 January, 2014

Back in action proper today after the holidays with lots to sort out. First day in the new office – Sparkhouse business innovation centre at Lincoln University’s Enterprise@Lincoln building. Day one jobs include opening a bank account and stepping up the staff search activity. Christmas got in the way to a large degree. In fact most of December did:)

Over the Christmas break I had occasion to order a takeaway from The Castlegate Indian Restaurant. You know the one. It’s by Lincoln Castle’s Westgate next to the Victoria pub. It was Boxing Day and our son Tom’s birthday. A curry is traditional on this occasion so I rang them at around 10.30 to check that they were open. Nobody answered! Huh!

I checked their website and saw that they didn’t normally open until 4.30pm. Fair enough I thought. I was six hours too early. As an afterthought I dropped them a line on Twitter @CastlegateLincs. We follow each other. Within five minutes I had a response telling me that yes they were indeed open that day.

This for me is a prime example of how communications are going to change, already changing in fact. I can see the day where @CastlegateLincs will hardly ever use the phone. Why should we bother with a phone? It clearly didn’t do the job for me on that occasion. I realise that calls can be forwarded but that didn’t happen.

The phone is also a medium where mistakes can be made, misunderstandings, not hearing someone correctly when they speak their meal requirements. It’s the reason why businesses automate processes, or they should do. Moreover paying someone to answer the phone adds to the overhead of your business. Automation is going to permeate our lives to the extent that we won’t bother dealing with businesses who don’t make themselves easy to interact with. Check out this oldish post re trying to book a dental appointment. Every business, no matter what type, needs to move online.

This blog is an online entity. We haven’t even got a printer. Will have to see how we get on with that one:) There will always be occasions where you need to speak to someone but that doesn’t have to be done using a telephone.

@CastlegateLincoln is a prime example of the trend. Using the telephone I got no response but Twitter worked in very short order. Now they just need an online booking system.

Business Cloud datacentre social networking

First #bloggade a big success

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 22 August, 2013
No Comments on First #bloggade a big success

We held the first #bloggade at the Timico datacentre in Newark yesterday. A bloggade is as you may know the collective noun for a group of bloggers.

This first event was highly successful covering a range of blog related subjects:

1 The type of infrastructure used to host blogs (led by Timico hosting tech guru Michael Green) followrd by a guided tour of the Tiico NOC and datacenre.
2 A lengthy discussion on Search Engine Optimisation for your blog conducted by @phil_kelsey of Spiral Media and @mattdrussell of WebbHostingBuzz.
3 A general discussion about plug ins and which ones worked for people.

There was a great level of audience participation and a definite interest in holding another event, sometime in the run up to Christmas perhaps.

For a bit of fun we decided to have a go and see if we could get #bloggade to trend on twitter. Despite our intensive efforts it didn’t seem to be working. Then one of the bloggers suggested that if we tweeted that members of the currently in the news boy band “One Direction” had turned uo for #bloggade it might go viral. We did this and at the latest count have had a grand total of two retweets from (pre-pubescent?) OD fans. 🙂

Gotta say I’d never heard of em before this week!!!

Big thanks to all who came especially @mattdrussell whose original idea this was together with @phil_kelsey @jangles and @AndrewGrill for their major contributions.

All in all considering we organised this from scratch to execution in 4 weeks I have to say it was a great success.

Catch ya later.

PS this post was typed by thumb on my Galaxy s4 en route to a customer meeting in London. I’d be amazed if the formatting is spot on – I’ll make any necessary adjustments when I get back to laptop land.

Tags bloggade, Cloud, Timico