social networking – T E Shepherd

The visability of the platform?

Thomas — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:38:59 +0000

Back in the earlier days of the internet, in the years that came before the juggernaut that is Facebook (other social networks are available), The Internet felt more like a community than it does now. What? I hear you cry. What can be more community-like than Facebook? Let me tell you…

Before Facebook, before this incarnation of my online journal, I like many millions of people would post daily (sometimes hourly!) ramblings of our thoughts and lives. It was the Facebook of its day.

But there was a difference

LiveJournal was a blogging site. Yes, it was sometimes – sometimes often – used for snappy or cryptic one-liners or howlings of despair when emotions were running high or spirits were low, but these would always be followed up by something more substantial. You could also post these often person ‘journal entries’ to any number of ‘friends filters’ (or indeed completely private) quickly and easily allowing you to control exactly who can see and comment on what you write.

Facebook also allows you to do this too, I hear you cry! Yes, yes it does. Well, it doesn’t allow you to screen-before-posting comments, choose who out of your friends can comment (or comment without being screened first), or prohibit comments entirely.

It’s not my platform

The Intricacies of how and where you can comment are niggling details, as our the friends filters. The big thing is that Facebook (or Twitter, or Instagram… amongst others…) is not My (or Your) platform. You are tied into how the new age of social media sites look, feel and behave. Facebook in particular chooses what to show you and then shows it to you how it wants to show it to. LiveJournal may not have been more your own website but you could personalise the look of every page exactly as you wanted it to, and to some degree embed it in in your own website, and you controlled exactly what you wanted to see. And it was easy to do all of that. When your friends or contacts commented on your posts the comments stayed on your journal, together, forever.

Those were the heydays of LiveJournal, it was the place to be, but it was only for a subset of people. Most people seemed not to be introduced in putting their voices online… Until Facebook. I think its fair to say that the big growth period for Facebook was between 2007 and 2009. Suddenly everyone wanted to share everything and instead of doing it in a safe arena where you could control what you shared with whom, they all wanted to do it an environment controlled by the website and in many cases in public or semi-public.

We’ve reached a point now where people blog here and there and everywhere and share it on Facebook and Twitter, and then the conversation takes place on Facebook and Twitter and not with the original post. This is fine, you might say, the converstation is still being had… It’s not okay though. People are not following my blog for my blog, they’re not enagaging with the post where it was posted. They’re seeing these posts on their social media stream if their social media stream decides to show it in amongst the cat videos, the moaning about Mondays, and the cute cat videos.

I’m not convinced that people are even reading the posts behind the link, but rather just liking and sharing based on what we expect it to say. I observed this disengagement on the bus last year, and wrote a poem about it.

Engaging the disengaged?

So as authors we have our author platform that we have spent hours over designing and tweaking and looking just right. We have our homepage and our call to action, we have our books, our blog, some nice little extras, and our newsletter sign up, but how do we actually get people to see it? Once you get some visibility, you can use that visibility to build more, but when your visibility is precisely you and your cat who is draped across your laptop morning, noon, and night, how do you put your author platform in front people?

Short of crafting your social media posts in the form of annoying, spammy clickbait how do you engage your readers to actually click the link, read, enjoy, comment, and share when for the most part they are scanning their social networks on their phone, and swiping down, liking this and liking that, and moving on?

What are your experiences of building your platform and making it actually visable to people who might be interested outside your own personal sphere of influence? Comment below with your thoughts…

The Other Social Networks

Thomas — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 15:15:25 +0000

I’m a high-user of social networking. I admit it. I have been for over a decade now, having started my Livejournal early in 2003 partly as a response to being bullied at work. Since then, I have met friends, networked with contacts, rekindled lost friendships, and met a girl who is now my wife through various forms of social networking.

When most people think of social networking they probably think of Facebook and Twitter. But there are countless of others: Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, amongst hundreds of others you have probably never heard of. I rember being shown a slide with them all on a while back.

In the last week I’ve investigated Ello, not that there is an awful lot to discover about Ello, and *technically* I have a Google+ account not that I ever use it. For ages I have had a Pinterest account (does anyone else call it Pin Interest? No, just me then…) but I have not really ever got a handle on what it is or how I use it so I have just kind of left it there, tucked away in a corner of the internet and nevere thought much of it – apart from why? when I got the the occasional follow request from someone. I mean really, why follow me on something I don’t use and have nothing (interesting or not) to say on!

This week though I have finally decided how I can use Pinterest successfully. As discussed yesterday I am in the middle of briefing designers for a cover for my forthcoming novel, Mr Tumnal, and I am finding that a Pinterest board is just what is required for gathering together ideas and examples to show someone.

Follow Thomas’s board Mr Tumnal on Pinterest.

Facebook: a word about privacy

Thomas — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:59:00 +0000

Every week or so another meme circulates Facebook in a scaremongering type way that alarms folk into reposting the scare story/warning. Privacy and security on Facebook is actually better than people realise, you just need to take a moment to understand it.

Firstly, the only place where you can truly control who you can see what you do on is on your Timeline. What follows is an idiots guide to who can see what you do on Facebook and where:

Facebook Pages: these are the official pages of organisations, companies, bands, authors. They are public and if you like or post on, then others who like or lookat them can see what you do.
Open Groups: just as the name suggests, anyone can join the group and see what any of the other members of the group put on there even if they are not your friend.
Closed groups: slightly more private than open groups, you need to request membership to join, but once in anyone else who is also a member can see what you do inside that group even if they aren’t your friend.
Secret groups: only visible to people who are made members or invited to be members by the admins of the group. But again, once you have membership, anyone else who is also a member can see what you do in the group.
Friends’ timelines: when you post on a friends timeline/wall the visibility of what you put on the timeline is controlled by your friend. If they have their timeline set to be public viewable then what you post there will also be public even if your security settings are set to something higher.
Your Timeline: You can control who sees what here. Your timeline is different from the Facebook homepage when you are logged in (what you see there is your newsfeed or an aggregation based on various algorithms of what your friends have been doing and the pages/groups that you follow). Your timeline can be viewed based on your filters and security/privacy settings.

Timeline Security

At the basic level you can set your timeline to be public, friends only, or private. It can be so much more flexible though.

If you have lots of friends you might find that your newsfeed doesn’t display all updates. To make sure you see *everything* that particular friends post you can set them as Close Friends
If you use facebook for networking and/or work you may have *friends* who aren’t friends. Facebook allows you to classify them as *Acquaintances*. You could therefore set the default visibility of your timeline to Friends except acquaintances and open it out wider only for selected posts.
You can add selected friends to List groups, eg. ‘work’, ‘family’, ‘friends’, ‘people interested specific interest’, and then when you post an update select to make it viewable to only those groups of people. A friend can be in more than one (or none) list.

Personally I would recommend a default security setting of Friends except acquaintances and open up/restrict posts from there.

Also remember, that just like what you say at the cooler might be talked about by others later, and elsewhere, once you say something on Facebook with any security setting, it doesn’t stop others repeating what you say somewhere else either online or offline. The only truly secure place is for it to remain in your own head!

A Day in London Town

Thomas — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:23:00 +0000

So, I had a away day into London Town today – let out for good behaviour if you will. I was attending the Technology For Marketing & Advertising trade fair at Earl’s Court. It’s a slightly odd fit for me as it was mainly geared for the hardcore marketeers and the folk manning the stands were mainly only interested if you were a budget holder with a remit to buy into their product within 3 months, but there were some interesting seminars and lectures to be had around social media.

One of the problems that we face at work is actually getting students, staff, potential students… to engage with our twitter feed and our facebook accounts or have anyone to comment on our news stories other than spammers. So its the engagement bit that I’m interested in. After listening to a lot being said about social networking I think that I’m of the conclusion that that may well be one of the great unanswered questions. People who have it working well will tell you how great it is, and they will give you case studies over what you should and shouldn’t be doing based on their experience in their field. Asked what you should be doing in your field and they can’t help you. It’s clearly not an exact science.

What is clear is that, by far, the majority of people use the internet for learning, fun, and to socialise and that’s the same on mobile devices too. So to get with the engagement, and have people enjoying being around our social networking and our blogs and our website (and buying our products or studying at our univerAsity) I think we have to go against what our company bosses might think and give them the fun, and hope that when they decide what we can offer them, they remember our good name and come a-running.

I am tired after my day in London though. It’s nice but I couldn’t live there. It tires me, and come home feeling grubby and headachey. That said, I do like Baker Street station, all the old stonework the window shafts cut into tunnels, the decorative woodwork and the carved statues and the old Victorian tiles. Got to be one of my favourite stations.

I also saw a vision of the publishing future on the tube today. A girl who obviously works in publishing was reading PARIS IN LOVE – SECOND PASS PAGES, which I take it to mean the second pass proofs of a book on her kindle. Tonight I looked up the book on Amazon: an as yet unpublished book available to preorder.

Damn it, the girl worked for Random House! I should have got talking to her and made a contact to get my own book published…?!? *grins*

The importance of choosing what to share oneself

Thomas — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:45:00 +0000

Further to Charlie Brooker’s recent article in The Guardian on the obsession with sharing every detail of your life online, and particularly with reference to the way that, unless you make the very deliberate act to turn off the feature, Spotify shares every single song you listen to you with your friends and followers on Facebook.

When Sony launched the Walkman back in the late 70s, its main appeal was that for the first time in history you could stroll down the high street listening to Neil Diamond belting out Sweet Caroline and no one could judge you for it. It made you the master of a private world of music. If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.

I love this analogy. Not that I don’t dislike loving. I love sharing, but I also see the difference between given the opportunity to easily share something and having some autonomous computer decide before me. If I read, or watch something, or do something online that might be of interest to other people, I like the fact that websites are getting more joined up and can give you the opportunity to share it with all or specific networks that I may be part of. But the good websites will provide me with some suggested text which I can edit and taylor as I see fit, and choose which networks I am going to share it on, or choose not to share it.

On the twelfth day of advent: the curse of mobile technology?

Thomas — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:08:00 +0000

Unless you are writing a thriller its always been the case that its usual to find some way of writing out the police, or have your protagonists in some way resolve the plot without the need for them. It can however be a challenge to maintain a level of believability as regards police absence, incompetence. In recent years the same can be said for mobile phones. As an example of which, think how different Swallows & Amazons would have been if they had had mobile phones or GPS units (notwithstanding that John, Susan, Roger and Titty would probably not have been allowed to go off alone like that these days)?

I had an interesting discussion with Rhiannon Lassister this afternoon about mobile phones in stories, and I think that I might be coming round to the idea that they are not such the threat that could be. In fact, Rhiannon demonstrates quite neatly in Ghost of a Chance how you can have both mobile phones and police in the story whilst keeping them as essentially ineffective to the protagonists resolving the plot.

Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five or …of Adventure books are other books I had previously thought would be ruined by mobile phones, but I think Rhiannon might be causing me to rethink this. After all, as she says, there are always to right them out if necessary. In Blyton’s books they spent a large amount of time down in caves where mobiles don’t work. And if you are working with magic, or you can get through to people who may not be able to help, or help in time…

Indeed in my own books I both write out mobile phones and embrace the modern technology in The End of All Worlds. When I need them, scientists can access the most up to date climate theories but when Eleanor gets lost in the mountains, mobiles can be out of reception, or completely in another world when it comes to mixing with the huldufolk. And in Mr Tumnal I positively enjoy going to town with social networking and modern communication.

So maybe, mobiles are not the threat to plots that I once thought.

Paranoia

Thomas — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:25:00 +0000

Jo’s post today has also got me thinking around the subject…

I’ve been thinking lately that I have a very odd mixed attitude to my online identity. On the one hand, I’m very proud of my site and my journal. I’m happy for people who Google for me to find my website, and my website has my real name and my city on it which, to be honest, would be enough to find me in the phone book if I’m not ex-directory (I can’t remember – I’ll have to check). And yet I’ve only very recently made my livejournal email address avaible to my friends via my profile. Which is insane because anyone with a small amount of knowledge about LJ could deduce the existence of that address anyway. And LJ will mangle it to protect me from spambots. My birthday and location are still set to be private (which makes me wonder why I’ve filled them in) even though that much location info is already available on my website (and, taking a closer look, in my bio) and I’m not that sensitive about my age or anything. It doesn’t make sense.

What seems to happen is that given an plain text area, I’m able to be pretty relaxed about what I reveal about myself. However, presented with a checkbox saying “Hide information x from the general public” I almost always seem to choose the most paranoid setting I can possibly put it on. The only thing I can ascribe it to is a lifetime of checking the “Do not send me fucking junk mail or send my info to other people who might want to” box on every form I fill in – the legacy of being the daughter of a cynical advertising exec. In the cold light of day though, the whole thing seems inconsistent, so I’m going to overcome my nerves (what the hell does it matter if anyone knows my birthday anyway!) I’ve decided to mark it all as public. It’s possible that this will result in a flood of support requests over IM/email for me, but I am the master of the polite brush-off

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is putting some more concrete contact details online but here I’m not going to rush in here. If you don’t know me in real life, you could, given a stalker-like determination, get in contact with me IRL but the dividing line between contact in meat space and contact online is pretty clearly drawn at the minute, although there are a few of you who blur it on occasion. I’ve seen a lot of people put contact information in friends only or filtered posts, but I don’t really quite feel comfortable with either. I don’t necessarily want everyone who’s entries I want to read to be able to ring me up, but I think I’d find the choices in creating a custom filter for that pretty tricky. In the end, I think I want to control any transition from online to real world relationships at least to a certain extent and there’s a certain element of need-to-know. There’s not a lot of point in just randomly giving out my phone number – most of you will never want or need to phone me. So I guess this is something I’m going to put on a need to know basis. I’m not saying I won’t give it out – I just won’t be sticking it up for everyone to see.

I found the mood and direction of these thoughts to be strangely echoing some of my own thoughts earlier today. You see, I think I can understand where tinyjo is coming from with the uncertainty of online v. in person existance. I was just thinking earlier today, of my decision to not let the opinions of (a few) unhelpful and unkind people dictate what I want to do, and to be myself – starting this journal almost a year ago was part of that, to put myself out there and try some new, fun things.

This being so, why have I made the first three posts of this year *friends only*? Why have a great deal of my posts towards the end of last year been friends only? In part this latter question can be answered by explaining that these protected entries have been put behind a *writing* filter, as these may not be of interest to all people, but there are others…? Having discovered recently that there are some people who I would perhaps not have chosen to read my journal have found it, I guess I have subconciously elected to screen some of my thoughts into places that they cannot see. Why? I don’t shout about my journal but if I really minded people finding it I wouldn’t have put it so clearly within the framework of my website … it’s not even if I care particularly what they think or might say, as I don’t value the opinions that people of that mindset have.

Hrmm… it’s all very odd, and this post probably doesn’t even make any sense?!! I’m probably being overly-sensitive (as is my way) and make many more of my posts open to all. What do you think?