For the record: I still love Twitter, but in 2012 I’m giving G+ more of my time.

Follow me @rosiesherry or add me to your Circle on Google+.

1. The search baby!

The search on Twitter winds me up to the moon and back.  It’s so frustratingly hard to find previous tweets.  This is not a problem with Google+.  Infact it’s quite the opposite.  If you do a search in G+ whilst thinking about the search in Twitter it actually makes you smile.  Well it did for me at least

2. It’s easier to comment

Sure, Twitter is simple to comment on or ‘talk with someone’. You just @ people, right? But that gets confusing.  If multiple tweets are happening, it’s hard to see who is replying to what.  I’ve just found myself saying ‘aaaarrrrghhh’ too many times.

G+ doesn’t have this problem.  A nice simple commenting system is in place. It works. It’s easy to read. It doesn’t waste my time!

3. It’s not about real time

Real time is too hard. Sure, for a while it was alright. But then many more interesting people joined Twitter. And I wanted to keep up with them all. I’d say things like ‘you’re cool, I’d like to follow you?’. But I couldn’t. I remembered I had a life and work to get on with. And even if I did end up following *you* I wouldn’t have the time to read the Tweets.

And then people say to me, ‘Yo sista. Did you not see my Tweet?’ And I’m like, ‘No sorry dude, I do apologise’.

G+ is about being current, but you don’t have to check it every 5 minutes.  It’s ok.  It’s like they understand that people have a life.

4. Keeping organised

Twitter just kind of grew and then came ways to help people organise the information flow.  As a result, no matter how many times I try to keep my lists up to date – I JUST CAN”T. Honest, I’ve tried. And tried, but it just ain’t happening. As a result it’s just a big pile of mess.  Being organised is essential for such a stream of data/info.

G+ on the other hand make you add someone to a circle to begin with.  This makes you make a conscious decision on how to organise your contacts from day one.  For me, this has worked wonders.

5. There’s no limit on what you can share

140 characters has long been the ‘success’ point of Twitter, but more recently I’ve found it being a real pain not being able to share more. I feel it is actually holding me back. Sure, people can share links, but I’m never quite sure what to expect when I click them. With G+ I can share anything, right there and then.  No need to click elsewhere. Winner.

A great post (Robert Scoble would call it a blog post) about whether blogging is dead or not.

Both Facebook and Google+, this year, added the ability to do long-form writing inside a social network. I’d argue that’s causing a new age of blogging: one that is free of commercial concerns. How many of you have clicked on a link to read a news article, or a long opinion piece, and found it hidden behind an ad, or, worse, split up into little pages so you gotta click “next” just to read the next few paragraphs. Both of those behaviors are because the business model for content developers is so dismal that we gotta do very anti-reader things just to make a buck.

I’ve definitely noticed a trend in the past couple of years. It is getting harder and harder to drive traffic to websites.  A tweet a year ago carried much more value than the same tweet does today.

I’m constantly reviewing traffic that I drive to @testingclub.  In the early days LinkedIn was great. Then that faded a bit and along came Twitter.  Now that is fading. Facebook is picking up  a bit in that sense.  Perhaps the next focus should be G+.

I know from a personal level I’m get frustrated at the very ‘temporary’ nature of Twitter.  If you don’t keep up with it you lose out.  Following conversations is a nightmare too. It’s gotten to the stage where I’ve mostly given up trying to keep on top of Twitter.

And then some people say ‘that’s the way Twitter is, you don’t need to consume everything’. And yes *I* know that, but it would still make my life much easier if Twitter was more searchable and conversations easier to keep track of.

And, oh, it really gripes me when people say, ‘oh, you didn’t know? Well, I posted it on Twitter.’ Sigh.

I like the long form of social media that G+ provides. I just need to make a habit of it and make it more part of my day.

Maybe some more of my *friends* will join me

I’m not giving up my blog btw – as much as a pain it might be, I will need to keep sharing stuff I do and create via my blog and whatever social network  or solution works best at that given moment.

I’ve taken up using Instagram alot.

Jamie Oliver kept cropping up as a recommended user. I like what he does, so I followed him. Then I noticed that each of his photos gets a stupid amount of ‘likes’ each time.  I wondered how many followers he had, but it appears Instagram is a bit confused.

Would be great to see more of this in the UK. Coding For Kids is making some community progress with this.

We use DropBox for producing The Testing Planet. Being a virtual team it is very handy!

One thing about working virtually is that it can be quite hard to know if someone has started on something or what stage they are on a certain project. With The Testing Planet it is a case of managing, editing and creating lots of images and files – very well suited for DropBox.

The handy thing is I get automatic updates of things that are happening. If a new file has been added, edited or removed. It’s quite handy because I can then know:

• who else is involved in the reviewing, editing and designing of The Testing Planet
• if articles are being submitted (or not!)
• articles are being edited
• when new images have been created
• the progress of the publication as a whole

And all of this without actually sending emails or chatting with anyone. I can just see it all happening.

Thomas Harvey called it Drop Box Stalking. I like that term

There’s a common saying on the web that ‘content is king’.  Without good content your website will *suck*.

I think this was more true in the *olden days*.  You know, as little as 3 years ago – when the social web wasn’t as mainstream as it is now. It is still partially true, but it just doesn’t complete the whole picture.

My theory is that content is just one of The 3 Kings.

Drawn on my iPad

So here we have:

Content

A pretty crucial part. It needs to be interesting. Engaging. Fresh. SEO optimised. Unique. Etc.

Design

Nothing worse than coming across some great content, but the design lets it down.

• Has thought been put into the layout of the content?
• Is the design modern?
• Is it structured correctly?
• Is it easy on the eye?
• Is it readable?
• Is it easy to find out about the person or people behind the website/content?
• How do you find out more?
• How do you subscribe to their RSS, Twitter, etc?

There is often a fine line between design and marketing…

Marketing

Many people will run away from this concept and I personally am not sure if ‘marketing’ is the right word.  Initally I was going to call it ‘relationships’, but felt like that was only part of the story.

Having great content that is well designed just isn’t enough.  To really make it a success it needs to be ‘marketed’. That’s the truth. Yes, some things can go viral on their own, but the average bit of content that does get popular happens because there has been some creative and effective marketing done in the background.

What’s involved in marketing?

• Relationships that have already been built – in real life and online
• Reaching out to new people, constantly
• Finding creative ways for people to talk about you
• How do you make best use of your relationships?
• Is there a strategy for specific bits of content?
• What are other people saying about the website?
• Just a tweet is not (usually) enough (especially if you don’t have any friends) – how else will you spread the word online? LinkedIn (groups)? G+? Facebook?
• And when you do spread the word online, will you make sure it is about engaging with people and following up the conversation, rather than just broadcasting your message?  Engaging takes time/effort and gets results. Broadcasting is quick and easy – the results are not usually that good.

A full list of marketing tips requires an additonal post (or book!).  Take this as a guide – hopefully the overview of The 3 Kings has helped

Had the first experience of buying a Kindle book the other day.  It was all very slick ‘n’ all that.

But when I go to buy a Kindle book, or any digital format book, something in my head tells me it is wrong if the digital format is more expensive than the print format.

It just doesn’t feel right. It has often left me not wanting to buy either because I feel quite annoyed by the whole situation

Why can’t they price the Kindle formats lower? Why don’t they discount them like they do with print versions?

I enjoyed watching this video. Worth checking out the other videos from Standford’s ecorner.

About the video

Stanford Engineering lecturer and FLOODGATE partner Ann Miura-Ko offers insight into the democratization of innovation in the Internet age, and its affect on investment cycles. Additionally, Miura-Ko speaks candidly about the need to test business models, her firm’s desire to be an advocate for “thunder lizard” entrepreneurs, and the challenges of achieving true work/life balance.

Throughout my years of researching and participating on the social web I’ve increasingly found ways to judge organisations from the way they communicate.

And here I present the most popular things that organisations do to annoy me on the social internetz.

Claiming Huge Popularity

We are the best. We are the first. We are the most innovative. We are the biggest. We are the most popular. We have the best selling software/book/magazine/ebook/service.[insert product here]

Whatever the claim, they are probably a) untrue b) if they are true the claims don’t actually add value to the user experience.  E.g. being the biggest often means you can’t provide the customer care that is really needed.

Launching….still launching…still launching…

I’ve seen it time and time again. Launch pages that never launch.  Or when they do there is huge disappointment.   It’s a classic of ‘launch and they will come’, but all too often it is ‘launch and some came and most left pretty darn quickly’.

The ones who want big social stats

Those that follow on Twitter. Don’t bother to reach out. Wonder why they are not being followed back, then unfollow again.

Or those that follow using some dodgy marketing software to automate follows.

Or those that insist on gettin a following even if the audience is irrelevant.

They can still take their social media stats to their bosses and claim success…and keep their jobs?  It is all too easy to collect and show the wrong data to make yourself look good.

Hey, look at us…

We’re on this social network. And that one. Follow us. Like us. Subscribe. Go on. Please do spend your time doing it.  It makes our numbers look good.  Oh, what, we’re supposed to update these things? And respond to what people are saying on the internetz?

Everyone else is doing it…

I’ve lost track of the amount of times I have spoken to people who feel totally under pressure to create a bigger social media presence.  Of course it’s understanding why people feel the pressure, especially when all people talk about are the success stories – the people and organisations that have really won through the social web.  Yet with every winner out there, there are probably a million losers.  These are attempts at being *social* not being understood properly or given the right backing.  You only have to look at the amount of dead Twitter accounts or Facebook pages out there.

If only people understood that this actually makes them look worse than doing nothing at all.

Stuff comes and goes. And when it comes to the web, things can go quite quickly.  The following is a picture of web startups.  The ‘x’s are ones that didn’t make it. The green circles are ones that got acquired (doesn’t mean they have been successful).  Note that the image is dated 2009, so current data may look more pink.

Coping with failure

A couple of people hacking away in their back offices can create and launch a product just as quickly as they can remove it or allow it to rot.

I remember liking and using StikiPad.  An online wiki. The creators left it to rot.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but there sure were some unhappy people left unable to access or export their data.

Of course they should be unhappy.

Coping with change

The owner of the London Bridge Twitter bot were also unhappy when it got handed over to their ‘rightful’ owner.  I would have been too. London Bridge now ‘own’ the @LondonBridge Twitter account.  Or at least they think they do.

At the end of the day Twitter has control over it. Sure there are legalities and trademarks. We can all put efforts into our Twitter relationships, but Twitter has the final say. Twitter could disappear. Just like Stikipad or the Lehman Brothers did.

Or perhaps they could change their business model causing unforseen changes.  Or perhaps they become old skool and we will all find out we no longer want to use it.

Coping with the future

Who knows. We can’t predict the future.

What would you do if you no longer had access to Twitter? How would you keep in touch with people? The same goes for FaceBook. Or now, Google+.

What if people came to rely on Google+ and then it is removed as a service?  Like what has happened to Google Wave.

Do you blog on a hosted solution? Like Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous…?

If they were to disappear overnight (or over a few weeks), where would you go? How would you take your readership and content with you? What would happen to all that great SEO you had built up over the years?

I could go on. And on. Hopefully you catch the drift.

Living with it

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use online services (aka ‘the cloud’).  It often (or usually!) makes sense.  It’s usually cheap or free to do so and very easy to get started ‘in minutes’.

However, the problem comes when the service halts, from their end or yours. Or when it doesn’t evolve as fast as competitors. Or when people choose to leave.

I don’t have answers for this.

I have connections, data and relationships everywhere. You probably do too.

Though I’m open to the concept that any one of the things that I use could disappear.  It could be heart breaking and a real big pain in the back side, but it should be something that we should mentally prepare for.

For the time being I am:

• committed to hosting my own website – hopefully this is something I can always hold on to and people will always know to find me at rosiesherry.com
• Working towards keeping my contacts and relationships up to date
• Back up in more than one place – my website, contacts, documents, photos, videos, etc…
• Avoiding services where backing up or exporting data is not possible.
• Going to accept change in any of the online services I use. Embrace them where I can, move on if need be.
• Keeping my brain active so I can remember stuff without having to rely on the web !
• Returning to logging everything on pen and paper, no, not really – this one is a lie