Tag Archives: awards

My Year in Social Media

In some ways, this post is a belated follow-up to my last blogpost about some of my blog statistics:

Almost 30k « Disparate.

In the two years since I published that post, I’ve received over 100 000 visits on this blog and I’ve diversified my social media activities.

Altogether, 2008 has been an important year, for me, in terms of social media. I began the year in Austin, TX and moved back to Quebec in late April. Many things have happened in my personal life and several of them have been tied to my social media activities.

The most important part of my social media life, through 2008 as through any year, is the contact I have with diverse people. I’ve met a rather large number of people in 2008 and some of these people have become quite important in my life. In fact, there are people I have met in 2008 whose impact on my life makes it feel as though we have been friends for quite a while. Many of these contacts have happened through social media or, at least, they have been mediated online. As a “people person,” a social butterfly, a humanist, and a social scientist, I care more about these people I’ve met than about the tools I’ve used.

Obviously, most of the contacts I’ve had through the year were with people I already knew. And my relationship with many of these people has changed quite significantly through the year. As is obvious for anyone who knows me, 2008 has been an important year in my personal life. A period of transition. My guess is that 2009 will be even more important, personally.

But this post is about my social media activities. Especially about (micro)blogging and about social networking, in my case. I also did a couple of things in terms of podcasting and online video, but my main activities online tend to be textual. This might change a bit in 2009, but probably not much. I expect 2009 to be an “incremental evolution” in terms of my social media activities. In fact, I mostly want to intensify my involvement in social media spheres, in continuity with what I’ve been doing in 2008.

So it’s the perfect occasion to think back about 2008.

Perhaps my main highlight of 2008 in terms of social media is Twitter. You can say I’m a late adopter to Twitter. I’ve known about it since it came out and I probably joined Twitter a while ago but I really started using it in preparation for SXSWi and BarCampAustin, in early March of this year. As I wanted to integrate Austin’s geek scene and Twitter clearly had some importance in that scene, I thought I’d “play along.” Also, I didn’t have a badge for SXSWi but I knew I could learn about off-festival events through Twitter. And Twitter has become rather important, for me.

For one thing, it allows me to make a distinction between actual blogposts and short thoughts. I’ve probably been posting fewer blog entries since I became active on Twitter and my blogposts are probably longer, on average, than they were before. In a way, I feel it enhances my blogging experience.

Twitter also allows me to “take notes in public,” a practise I find surprisingly useful. For instance, when I go to some kind of presentation (academic or otherwise) I use Twitter to record my thoughts on both the event and the content. This practise is my version of “liveblogging” and I enjoy it. On several occasions, these liveblogging sessions have been rather helpful. Some “tweeps” (Twitter+peeps) dislike this kind of liveblogging practise and claim that “Twitter isn’t meant for this,” but I’ve had more positive experiences through liveblogging on Twitter than negative ones.

The device which makes all of this liveblogging possible, for me, is the iPod touch I received from a friend in June of this year. It has had important implications for my online life and, to a certain extent, the ‘touch has become my primary computer. The iTunes App Store, which opened its doors in July, has changed the game for me as I was able to get a number of dedicated applications, some of which I use several times a day. I’ve blogged about several things related to the iPod touch and the whole process has changed my perspective on social media in general. Of course, an iPhone would be an even more useful tool for me: SMS, GPS, camera, and ubiquitous Internet are all useful features in connection to social media. But, for now, the iPod touch does the trick. Especially through Twitter and Facebook.

One tool I started using quite frequently through the year is Ping.fm. I use it to post to: Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, LinkedIn, Brightkite, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Blogger, and WordPress.com (on another blog). I receive the most feedback on Facebook and Twitter but I occasionally get feedback through the other services (including through Pownce, which was recently sold). One thing I notice through this cross-posting practise is that, on these different services, the same activity has a range of implications. For instance, while I’m mostly active on Twitter, I actually get more out of Facebook postings (status updates, posted items, etc.). And reactions on different services tend to be rather different, as the relationships I have with people who provide that feedback tend to range from indirect acquaintance to “best friend forever.” Given my social science background, I find these differences quite interesting to think about.

One thing I’ve noticed on Twitter is that my “ranking among tweeps” has increased very significantly. On Twinfluence, my rank has gone as high as the 86th percentile (though it recently went down to the 79th percentile) while, on Twitter Grader, my “Twitter grade” is now at a rather unbelievable 98.1%. I don’t tend to care much about “measures of influence” but I find these ratings quite interesting. One reason is that they rely on relatively sophisticated concepts from social sciences. Another reason is that I’m intrigued by what causes increases in my ranking on those services. In this case, I think the measures give me way too much credit at this point but I also think that my “influence” is found outside of Twitter.

One “sphere of influence” which remained important for me through 2008 is Facebook. While Facebook had a more central role in my life through 2007, it now represents a stable part of my social media involvement. One thing which tends to happen is that first contacts happen through Twitter (I often use it as the equivalent of a business card during event) and Facebook represents a second step in the relationship. In a way, this distinction foregrounds the obvious concept of “intimacy” in social media. Twitter is public, ties are weak. Facebook is intimate, ties are stronger. On the other hand, there seems to be much more clustering among my tweeps than among my Facebook contacts, in part because my connection to local geek scenes in Austin and Montreal happens primarily through Twitter.

Through Facebook I was able to organize a fun little brunch with a few friends from elementary school. Though this brunch may not have been the most important event of 2008, for me, I’ve learnt a lot about the power of social media through contacting these friends, meeting them, and thinking about the whole affair.

In a way, Twitter and Facebook have helped me expand my social media activities in diverse directions. But most of the important events in my social media life in 2008 have been happening offline. Several of these events were unconferences and informal events happening around conferences.

My two favourite events of the year, in terms of social media, were BarCampAustin and PodCamp Montreal. Participating in (and observing) both events has had some rather profound implications in my social media life. These two unconferences were somewhat different but both were probably as useful, to me. One regret I have is that it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to attend BarCampAustinIV now that I’ve left Austin.

Other events have happened throughout 2008 which I find important in terms of social media. These include regular meetings like Yulblog, Yulbiz, and PodMtl. There are many other events which aren’t necessarily tied to social media but that I find interesting from a social media perspective. The recent Infopresse360 conference on innovation (with Malcolm Gladwell as keynote speaker) and a rather large number of informal meetups with people I’ve known through social media would qualify.

Despite the diversification of my social media life through 2008, blogging remains my most important social media activity. I now consider myself a full-fledged blogger and I think that my blog is representative of something about me.

Simply put, I’m proud to be a blogger. 

In 2008, a few things have happened through my blog which, I think, are rather significant. One is that someone who found me through Google contacted me directly about a contract in private-sector ethnography. As I’m currently going through professional reorientation, I take this contract to be rather significant. It’s actually possible that the Google result this person noticed wasn’t directly about my blog (the ranking of my diverse online profiles tends to shift around fairly regularly) but I still associate online profiles with blogging.

A set of blog-related occurences which I find significant has to do with the fact that my blog has been at the centre of a number of discussions with diverse people including podcasters and other social media people. My guess is that some of these discussions may lead to some interesting things for me in 2009.

Through 2008, this blog has become more anthropological. For several reasons, I wish to maintain it as a disparate blog, a blog about disparate topics. But it still participates in my gaining some recognition as an anthroblogger. One reason is that anthrobloggers are now more closely connected than before. Recently, anthroblogger Daniel Lende has sent a call for nominations for the best of the anthro blogosphere which he then posted as both a “round up” and a series of prizes. Before that, Savage Minds had organized an “awards ceremony” for an academic conference. And, perhaps the most important dimension of my ow blog being recognized in the anthroblogosphere, I have been discussing a number of things with Concordia-based anthrobloggers Owen Wiltshire and Maximilian Forte.

Still, anthropology isn’t the most prominent topic on this blog. In fact, my anthro-related posts tend to receive relatively little attention, outside of discussions with colleagues.

Since I conceive of this post as a follow-up on posts about statistics, I’ve gone through some of my stats here on Disparate.  Upgrades to  Wordpress.com also allow me to get a more detailed picture of what has been happening on this blog.

Through 2008, I’ve received over 55 131 hits on this blog, about 11% more than in 2007 for an average of 151 hits a day (I actually thought it was more but there are some days during which I receive relatively few hits, especially during weekends). The month I received the most hits was February 2007 with 5 967 hits but February and March 2008 were relatively close. The day I received the most hits was October 28, 2008, with 310 hits. This was the day after Myriade opened.

These numbers aren’t so significant. For one thing, hits don’t imply that people have read anything on my blog. Since all of my blogs are ad-free, I haven’t tried to increase traffic to this blog. But it’s still interesting to notice a few things.

The most obvious thing is that hits to rather silly posts are much more frequent than hits to posts I actually care about.

For instance, my six blogposts with the most hits:

Title Hits  
Facebook Celebs and Fakes 5 782 More stats
emachines Power Supply 4 800 More stats
Recording at 44.1 kHz, 16b with iPod 5G? 2 834 More stats
Blogspot v. WordPress.com, Blogger v. Wo 2 571 More stats
GERD and Stress 2 377 More stats
University Rankings and Diversity 2 219 More stats

And for 2008:

Title Hits  
Facebook Celebs and Fakes 3 984 More stats
emachines Power Supply 2 265 More stats
AT&T Yahoo Pro DSL to Belkin WiFi 1 527 More stats
GERD and Stress 1 430 More stats
Blogspot v. WordPress.com, Blogger v. Wo 1 151 More stats
University Rankings and Diversity 995 More stats

The Facebook post I wrote very quickly in July 2007. It was a quick reaction to something I had heard. Obviously, the post’s title  is the single reason for that post’s popularity. I get an average of 11 hits a day on that post for 4 001 hits in 2008. If I wanted to increase traffic, I’d post as many of these as possible.

The emachines post is my first post on this new blog (but I did import posts from my previous blog), back in January 2006. It seems to have helped a few people and gets regular traffic (six hits a day, in 2008). It’s not my most thoughtful post but it has its place. It’s still funny to notice that traffic to this blogpost increases even though one would assume it’s less relevant.

Rather unsurprisingly, my post about then-upcoming recording capabilities on the iPod 5G, from March 2006, is getting very few hits. But, for a while, it did get a number of hits (six a day in 2006) and I was a bit puzzled by that.

The AT&T post is my most popular post written in 2008. It was a simple troubleshooting session, like the aforementioned emachines post. These posts might be useful for some people and I occasionally get feedback from people about them. Another practical post regularly getting a few hits is about an inflatable mattress with built-in pump which came without clear instructions.

My post about blogging platform was in fact a repost of a comment I made on somebody else’s blog entry (though the original seems to be lost). From what I can see, it was most popular from June, 2007 through May, 2008. Since it was first posted, WordPress.com has been updated quite a bit and Blogger/Blogspot seems to have pretty much stalled. My comment/blogpost on the issue is fairly straightforward and it has put me in touch with some other bloggers.

The other two blogposts getting the most hits in 2008 are closer to things about which I care. Both entries were written in mid-2006 and are still relevant. The rankings post is short on content, but it serves as an “anchor” for some things I like to discuss in terms of educational institutions. The GERD post is among my most personal posts on this blog, especially in English. It’s one of the posts for which I received the most feedback. My perspective on the issue hasn’t changed much in the meantime.

To a Newbie Blogger

 

Lisamm, who just commented on two of my own blog entries, is asking about blogging:How to Increase Your Blog Hits « Books on the Brain

Blogging is new to me. I haven’t learned the lingo. I don’t know the etiquette. I don’t know what a meme is (Do I want one? Do I need one? Is it fattening?) What is the deal with bloggers giving other bloggers awards? No one has challenged me, or tagged me, or whatever it is people do. I’m totally winging it.Someone told me recently that I could increase my blog hits with an intriguing title on my entries. Hmmmm. This one might get noticed. I guess we’ll see how it works.Speaking of blog hits, I seem to be getting a lot (I guess). What is a lot? How many do other people get?What is up with my obsessive desire to check my stats? How I love to see the blog stat graph go up, up, up. Is this normal? Why do I care? Do other bloggers do that? Will the obsession wear off soon????Experienced bloggers, I would love to hear from you. I’m hoping my insanity is only temporary.

My answers:Simply put, meme is an idea which propagates itself. Think “viral marketing.” Among bloggers, it often refers to a kind of tag-like game by which one blogger asks other blogger to post about something (say, eight random things about yourself) and to do the same with other people. It’s a fun (and non-fattening) way to connect with fellow bloggers.Awards are a bit similar. Bloggers tend to enjoy kudos, praises, marks of recognition, etc. Some awards (the “thinking blog” one is an example) are given as a way to connect bloggers who perceive to be of the same calibre, in one dimension or another.Intriguing titles do help increase traffic and bloggers are often (semi-secretly) proud of their clever titles. In this sense, we’re no different from journalists! An issue with titles, though, is that the type of traffic it increases might be the type of headline-reading which does relatively little good to a blog. My best example is my Facebook Celebs and Fakes post which is getting good traffic, apparently for the wrong reasons… ;-)As anyone can guess, “a lot” of blog hits is a really relative measure. Some bloggers get thousands of hits every single day, others get a few hundreds a month. From November, 2006 to February, 2007, I was getting an average of about 180 hits a day (with a peak at 307 hits in a single day). Since then, I’ve been down to about 100 to 130 hits a day. I still consider this to be a lot of hits, especially when I compare it to the number of comments I get. I also notice (by looking at the WordPress.com statistics page) that many of the hits I get come from Web searches about terms for which my entries aren’t that relevant (cf. “celebs and fakes” above).Many bloggers are obsessed by stats even if they know that they don’t tell much of a story. Bloggers often discuss measurement tools, especially if their blogging has a financial impact. Personally, I do check my blog stats regularly but I don’t really care about the numbers. It’s more of a way to observe tendencies, to learn more about effects of blogging, and as a way to assess differences between blog entries. Besides, the way WordPress.com works, the stats page is where incoming links are displayed. Now, having said all this, it’s probably true that I get a pleasant feeling when I see my numbers going up and I probably was slightly disappointed when they dropped. But those feelings are really transient.Speaking of graphs going up. It seems to be a common effect among bloggers that a site’s traffic will increase pretty regularly, regardless of what the blogger does. At least, that’s what I figured until my March, 2007 drop. I’m still a bit puzzled about this, actually.As for insanity, I think it comes with the territory.Main point of blogging is: blog the way you want to blog. Have fun, experiment with things, don’t take yourself too seriously. Blogging is just a system for making content available publicly. There aren’t set rules about blogging. In other words, don’t listen to any piece of advice.Now, a few words of advice. ;-)It’s probably a good idea not to make too much of stats. They’re fun to look at but they don’t say much about blogs. A blog with a small but dynamic reader-base is often better than a blog getting a lot of hits. Technorati and other measures of influence are similarly misleading as blogging isn’t “about that,” for most people. Yes, there are “A-list bloggers” out there (blogging celebrities, very influential bloggers). But starting a blog to become an A-list blogger is like learning a new language to become a best-selling author in that language.Use the bookmarklet in your blogging system. I can’t paste the WordPress.com one because WordPress.com doesn’t accept JavaScript in blog entries (for security reasons, allegedly), but it’s the one at the bottom of the blog writing page. I personally find those bookmarklets to be among the best features available anywhere. When you see a web page you want to blog about, select a piece of text and click on the bookmarklet from your bookmark bar. You then have a new blog entry with the title of the page, a link to that page, and the portion of text you selected. This part is so ingrained in my blogging habits that I often look for a page to start an entry from instead of creating a blank entry. That part may sound silly but it makes sense in my workflow.Speaking of workflow, it’s probably a good idea to take on tabbed browsing if you haven’t done so already. One blogging use of browser tabs is as placeholders for would-be blog entries. Kind of like a “to do” list for blogging. Notice something potentially bloggable? Keep that tab open so you can come back to it when you have time. I know other bloggers are doing this too because some talk about the number of tabs remaining in their browsers.Which leads me to one of the main hazards of blogging: you end up thinking about all the things you could say and you never find time to do much of it. As a general concept, “Information Overload” refers to something similar. Hence the need to adopt a blogging strategy. Personally, I haven’t find the best way to do it yet but I am decreasing my “blogload,” somehow. In fact, blogging itself does make me more efficient as it provides a central place for putting things I would otherwise repeat. (Though I end up with something like seven blogs…) So, my advice here would be something like: think about ways to control the number of things you want to blog about.One way to think about it is that, with “big issues,” other people have certainly blogged about them. Though there’s something intimidating about this, it also means that you may not need to blog about something if it’s likely to become common knowledge soon.Many bloggers seem to crave the latest thing. They want to “scoop” a story, be the first to blog it. Though it pains me to do so, I must say that I’m probably as guilty of this as the next blogger. Problem with this is that it requires a lot of effort to keep up with everything which is happening. And while being the first to blog about something might be the best way to get incredible traffic, the outcome may not be worth the effort.I try to take a longer view on things. If I can, I like to bring multiple items together in the same blog entry. Kind of like a “roundup,” if I can. It’s also a lot of effort, but it’s less likely to make you crazy than the quest for the first post.This all reminds me of a blog post I read about types of blog posts. IIRC, it was a presentation file and it had some things to say about the effectiveness of those posts. Though this kind of thinking makes a lot of sense for media-oriented bloggers, there’s a lot more to blogging than trying to build readership.Which leads me to the more social aspects of blogging. In the past several months, my blogging activities have probably decreased as my Facebook (Fb) activities increased. While Fb and blogging are quite different from one another, connections are quite clear. Posting notes or other items on Fb is almost exactly like a simplified form of blogging.There are disadvantages to posting things on Facebook.com, by comparison with blogging. There aren’t (AFAICT) RSS feeds for Fb Notes and Posted Items. Only your Fb friends can see (and comment on) things you post on Facebook. There isn’t a WYSIWYG editor for Fb notes (though you can use basic HTML). Fb notes don’t have categories or tags (though you can tag Fb friends). And you don’t get neat stats.But there are nice things about Fb notes and posted items. Since those items are seen by people who already know you, it’s often easier to get feedback through Facebook posted items than through a (public) blog. And because posted items are put on your Facebook profile, there’s a special connection between your items and your Facebook persona. Not to mention that blog entries can be posted directly on Facebook, which kills two birds with one stone.To get back to social dimensions of blogging… No matter how much bloggers like to talk about blogging as a social form of writing, it tends to be one-to-many, not many-to-many. In fact, most people who leave comments on blog entries are bloggers themselves. Though blogging is very “democratic,” it’s not the most efficient community-building tool available online.Anyhoo…I do tend to ramble a lot. There’s a lesson about blogging, somewhere… ;-)