bobangus.com » social bookmarking

Yet Another Social Media Profile… But It’s Google

Bob Angus — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:15:20 +0000

Yesterday I created a new profile that may eventually help to plug me in to the social network of the future. I created Bob’s Google Profile – not to be confused with my Orkut profile. Google has recently deployed and stealthily launched several new features that hint at their long-term social network strategy and that targets Facebook.

Welcome to Google Profile

Google Profile is barebones at this point. I posted my picture, linked to BobAngus.com and added a brief about Bob description. I could not add my favorite music, movies, or munchies. Check it out on the Help page or the Googlesystem blog.

Sepideh Saremi at Searchviews posted on this topic yesterday. She pointed out something very powerful about Google’s social network strategy. They want to approach social media through the email inbox. This tack makes a lot of sense because email remains the primary communication tool. Google Profile is perfectly in line with my Gmail account and my Google Reader.

In addition to technologies like OpenID, OAuth, and others, I am keeping an eye on what Google Profile is doing here. I think that they more than anyone can create a ubiquitous profile by leveraging their email position. And the timing could not be better. I am quickly heading toward profile and login chaos. I have over 30 different profiles across various social networks, blog networks, forums, and social bookmarking services.

Social Media Fatigue

Do not get me wrong. I am not complaining. I recognize that I am not the normal social media user. I love trying out the latest offering. I also rely heavily on these networks and social bookmarking services to grow readership of this blog and other sites. And most importantly, I have a lot of fun. However, I have moments when I am less than diligent in updating my social media world, which can quickly make me appear stale.

David Recordon at O’Reilly Radar had a great post this morning on this subject at Battling Social Network Fatigue … By Going Open. I agree that it is easy for the internet marketer, blogger or technology guru to become tired of all the services available. However, I estimate that the average person is likely to only focus their time on 1 or 2 large platforms, like Facebook or MySpace, and maybe another niche network. Regardless, the concern is very valid.

Beside fatigue, I am also seriously hesitant to proactively invite all my friends to every single network. My contacts are valuable relationships that I do not want to compromise. As a result of not spamming my entire contact list when I join each new service, there is some level of fracture across my networks. Updated: I just read a related discussion on Sitepoint’s blog.

Guess what I am going to do next to address fatigue and fracture? Yes, I am going to test some social network aggregator services like Spokeo, Plaxo Pulse, FriendFeed… which likely requires me to create yet another profile.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Digg-style Voting for Video Game Downloads

Bob Angus — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:39:55 +0000

I love to download and play a demo of the latest video games so that I can see what is worth buying. Besides demos, there are important post-release patches that I need and some amazing mods that extend the life of classic games like Doom and Half Life.

The problem is that the demo files are usually around 1GB in size. The Bioshock demo weighed in at 1.93GB (well worth it though). Plus, the official servers can be brutally slow. Try telling your kid that they can’t play on Club Penguin because Daddy is downloading the Hitman: Blood Money demo.

The solution for the download crazy gamer has been to slog it out for the better part of a day on official distribution sites. Or one can go to classic forum-based communities, where you have to weed through tons of listings and have to pray that you don’t spend 2 hours downloading a broken file… or worse.

Until now that is. FileRadar has melded the social voting model of Digg with the power of an open community for file distribution. I found FileRadar a few weeks ago thanks to a Techcrunch post and I’ve been hooked ever since. The result for me is less time downloading, less time searching, and the fun of giving my opinion to help the community. Plus, I love to see voting systems and social bookmarking concepts applied to a niche.

Here’s how it works. You, fellow gamers and other distribution sites submit links to the demo, mod or patch for a particular video game. Then that adoring, yet equally flame-ready community of video game fanatics votes up the game file content with a “blip”. Then for each link submission, the community votes on your individual download quality and can make comments.

To find the recently released free, full version of Far Cry from a quality source, all I had to do was check the “blips” and quality ratings and then start downloading. FileRadar also helps you find what you want through an array of great sorting options, classic search functions, and a series of leaderboards.

If you are interested in social voting and bookmarking and how to apply it to a niche, I definitely recommend seeing what FileRadar has done. If you want a World of Warcraft mod while you are there, then you are in the right spot.

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Claiming my blog on Technorati

Bob Angus — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:09:52 +0000

I spent a lot of time this weekend researching what makes a great blog, strategizing about this blog, and building my master plan. The researching and learning portion led me to some incredible information on blogging best practices. In fact, my next few posts will be delving into the articles and posts that I read and I will provide some great resource lists.

But this post is all about one of a flurry of tasks that I will be diving into this week. This post is about setting up my Technorati Profile. Technorati is a great way for me to track how my blog is doing and at some point to help drive traffic here. Woo hoo! Here we go!