SOCIAL MEDIA PRISM V4.0
Ethority launched the fourth version of its “Social Media Prism” for Germany. There are two astonishing things about it:
1.) Social Media is developing so fast, that infographs older than 4 months could be considered as antique.
2.) The Social Media landscape is so big, that in my 3 months of exploring new services I only got to see a small part of the whole thing.
For fullsize pictures and downloads of the prism go to the ethority webpage
Well, I just realised, that it’s been about 1.5 months since my last post here, which is embarassing ;-) But just because I didn’t post here, doesn’t mean I already broke with my solution. I was actively learning new things on social media the whole time, but I made the mistake to keep them to me, instead of sharing and reflecting them here.
Here are two key learnings:
I’ll try my best to actually follow the second learning and try not to pass another month till my next post. Especially since I attended the Touristic Future Lounge in Munich where social media was one of the key topics. So stay tuned and be reeady for the Resolution 2012-train gaining speed again.
At the beginning of this month (incredibly how fast time passes!) I shared my first impressions of Twitter with you. I just stumbled upon an infograph you’ll find below. It’s incredible how fitting the four stages are.
As mentioned in the post on Twitter, I used to think Twitter is useless and just another thing that will disappear as fast as it came, but forced myself to try it anyway. I’m currently on level 3 where i’m starting to use it in a daily routine but I’m not (yet) addicted. So far twitter has served as a great way to connect to people I wouldn’t connect to otherwise and I learned about alot of great articles. I also stumbled upon really neat web 2.0 services. I promise to present some of them in the upcoming days.
Are you already on Twitter? On what stage do you see yourself?
I found this infograph on http://www.elrincondelombok.com.
After describing my first impressions of Twitter, I’ll talk about Foursquare this time.
For those who aren’t familiar with Foursquare, I describe the key concept first and afterwards point out the pros and cons I discovered so far.
What’s Foursquare all about?
Foursquare describes itself as a tool to better get around the world. Its goals are to help you stay in contact with your friends, to find new things in your area, to save money and get great deals.
Foursquare is a socalled location-based social network. By checking into places you can see who else is in the area, find tips about the area and get deals from local shops and services. The gameification of the whole service leads to users earning points for check-ins and special achievements (i.e. x-places in a week, becoming mayor of a cafe…).The local aspect of Foursquare leads to the fact that you’ll use it mainly on your mobile phone, however beside the apps there exists a normal webpage.
Is it any good?
I just started using Foursquare with this resolution, but already got a glimpse of it. I was quite sceptical first, because it can be dangerous when people know where you are and especially aren’t (—> breakins on holidays). However the whole gameification of Foursquare makes it hard to resist. For now I decided to only accept people as friends, that I actually know (—> I don’t know any robbers personally :-D ).
Unfortunately Foursquare isn’t really popular in Switzerland, YET. This results in a lack of special offers for Foursquare users and often you’re the only one using it at a place and therefore won’t meet any new people. I would love to check it out in the US, but it isn’t worth a whole flight ;-) I’ll definitly keep on using it in the next months and see how it will develop. You can find me here.
Wait, where’s the Infograph?
Instead of showing you some fancy infograph like in the earlier posts. I decided to use Fourgraph.me to show you my current FourSquare usage. As I mentioned before, I’m still settling into Foursquare and therefore the numbers aren’t really impressive ;-)
As a result of much appreciated feedback to my recent post “You can make only one first impression, so make sure it’s a good one!” I signed up for 2 additional services.
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Service #1:
Pinterest is basically a virtual pinboard, which lets you pin images to your pinboard while browsing the internet. This allows you to share cool stuff with peers. You can also browse through other users pinboards and see what they pinned. I’m signed up as Thierry Lutz/Kafilutz. So far it’s invite only in Europe, so if you need an invite just write it in the comments below…
Pinterest has, according to TechCrunch, grown nearly 40-fold over the last six months. It’s also on most “Social Media to watch in 2012”-Lists like this one from Jeff Bullas.
I’m curious to see how I’ll use it in the next months. On one hand it looks stylish and it’s easy to pin something, on the other hand there isn’t any usual newsffed with a structur like we’re used to.
Here’s a little screenshot I took:
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Service #2:
Path is a mobileapp available both for Android, as well as iOS. It lets you share whatever your doing at that moment (photos, music, location, etc…) The cool thing is that it checks you into neighboorhodds and you can see if there are any friends in the same area (similar to Foursquare). From the looks is it comparable to Facebook Timeline which makes me a little skeptic to wheter it will catch on (Why use it when you can do the same thing on facebook where all your friends are anyway?).
I have to admit that I haven’t used it intensly yet, so I might get positivly surprised once I look further into it. I’m “Thierry Lutz”, so if you’re on Path: add me ;-)
Here’s a Screen i found on Paths own blog:
As announced I will be posting the first impressions of the services I signed up to. I start with Twitter. Right after I decided to make this my social media year I signed up for Twitter (before this resolution I was only active on Facebook and Xing).
When I first heard about Twitter I thought it was a useless service that will soon fade away. This probably wouldn’t have changed without this Resolution. I might have joined it and never looked at it again after being affirmed that only a hand full of my facebook friends were on Twitter.
However: With this resolution I found myself forced to actually have a closer look at Twitter. The design and signing-up process are intuitive and a new tweet is posted without any problems. But what makes Twitter interesting is who you follow and who follows you.
After joining Twitter I suddenly started to see “Follow me”-Signs on a lot of websites and realised that Twitter might actually have some use. So far it provided me with a great posts and insights and I can recommend it at this point. It’s actually became the thing I check right after my mail (which gives me all the facebook-updates). I follow people I don’t follow through Facebook, Xing or LinkedIn. This leads to new inputs and sites I would have missed otherwise.
I’m currently following 140 Twitter-users, which means my feed is constantly updated. So far i managed to at least skim through most of them. I’m afraid this might change as the number of people I follow will grow. I also got some followers soon after I joined, but some of them seem to be bots to whom I denied access, so be careful. I hpe to grow bothe the number of following and the number of followers in the coming weeks and months.
So far I didn’t hold any long conversations over Twitter. I’m still the opinion this is easier over some comment-boxes or an instant chat, but I’m open to change. I neither used alot of hashtags and stuff like that yet, but I definitly will get the hang of it soon…
I’m sure my understanding of Twitter will evolve nearly as quick as my newsfeed updates, so be prepared to read about Twitter again. I would love to hear back from you about your use of Twitter! You can leave a comment or reach me on Twitter @Kafilutz.
As it shows, I became a big fan of infographs to illustrate basic knowledge over social media. So there’s another one: BuySellAds made this great Infograph about The who, why and how of Twitter. I originally found it (through Twitter) in this great Blogpost about Social Media Networks in 2012 by Jeff Bullas.
Okay before I get too much into my first impressions (which has to wait till after today), I ‘d like to share with you a great infographic about managing your e-personality.
As I pointed out in the last post, there’s obviously a risk, that social media can be used against you or give a bad impression. One thing to alway bear in mind is, that there is no fence between your real life and your digital life. This results in the most important rule of engaging in social media:
Never post anything that your not comfortable with discussing in real life.
Following this rule and keeping the contents of the following infograph in mind, it’s safer to actively use social media yourself than risking somebody else ruining your name for you.
I found this great infograph in a Mashable Article by Charlie White.
The last two days I’ve been quite busy getting started with my social media year. I’ve set up account on numerous services and i’m currently starting to get used to them and integrating them in my life.
As I do so the saying from the title came to my mind. Making a good first impression is key to successfully using social media (I’m pretty sure I’ll further examine this aspect during the upcoming year). But making the first impression stick is also a task the social media services itself have to master.
I’ll present these first impressions in the following days here on this blog.
These are the services I’ve signed up to and the usernames I used. Please connect with me:
As you can see, they’re already a lot :-D. But if I missed some great social media service, let me know! I’m still setting up some of the accounts above, so please don’t be disappointed if there’s not a lot of content there. It will soon follow!
I just realised that this is the step where I’ll become the public user (despite keeping facebook and flickr private). I guess it’s one of those things that are linked to exploring social media. If all hell breaks loose I already got a new years resolution for 2013: Get a new identity :-D
Well I guess i just add to the ongoing growth of social media… (found on visual.ly):
As the year 2011 ends in about 8 hours, it’s time to make resolutions for the upcoming year. Most people think about it as an opportunity to quit bad behaviour like eating/drinking to much, smoking or whatever. I on the other hand see it as an opportunity to explore something new and to learn new things.
I decided on making this year my social media year, where I actively look for new (at least for me new) ways to connect to other people over social media. My hope is to explore some services that are actually supporting me in my everyday-life and to better understand social media.
I believe there’s a chance that my generation (the ones that are born in the late 80s and early 90s) has the role of being a bridge-generation between the old analog world and the new e-world. This also gives us a chance to be some of the first to really adopt social media in an adult (socially and professionally) way, where social media plays, whithout a doubt, a big role.
Starting this blog serves two roles. First of all, i like to learn more about tumblr and the ways to use it. Second, i’ll use this blog as a social medium to keep track on my progress in the world of social media and to share the insights i gain. Who knows this might become one of the anchors of this resolution and serve as a key platform for discussions. I’m sure other uses will emerge during the upcoming year.
To conclude: I hope whoever will be reading this will be joining me on this journey through social media and explore and learn new things all through 2012. Because making resolutions is easy, keeping them is far more difficult.
P.S. Concerning the resolutions in general I’d like to share the following visual from visual.ly with you:
2012 will be my social media year! I'll try out every kind of social media that gets recommended to me and keep on using the ones that are actually worth using. I hope on getting a better understanding on how social media works and which services are useful.
Everybody is welcome to join ;-)
