Here is a list of resources I go back to time and time again.
There are many more and if you want to be included, please leave a comment!!
Gamify For The Win
Continuing my mix of gamification and social media articles (as I need a break from writing about gamification for a week!), I thought I would write down the tools and methods I use to manage Twitter and share articles. Not the most interesting bit of writing I will ever do, but I have been asked by a few how I do it – so here goes!
I use quite a few (free) online tools to manage my Twitter stream . That includes managing day to day conversations, followers, sharing and timing.
My most common tool however, is Tweetbot on my iPhone. I have this set to alert me whenever I get a new mention, follower, retweet or anything else. That way I am able to respond to people as soon as it is convenient to me. If you take nothing else away from this, that is the most important thing to do. Respond to people. Twitter is all about (for me at least), interesting conversations!
What can OnLive teach us about communication in the age of Social Media?
Last night the gaming Twitterverse went into riot mode (well polite murmurings), as a single tweet from Brian Fargo announced that OnLive was no more effective that day. This was based on an anonymous email he had received that said
“I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist”
From that rumours started to roll. OnLive was filing for bankruptcy. All employees were being laid off that day. IDG reporter Martyn Williams was even stood outside tweeting that he was seeing people leaving carrying boxes.
Seeing the news that Badgeville was to gamify social networks got me thinking about the old days. Social networks are nothing new. Back in “the day”, we all used to use forums (and bulletin boards before that) and chat rooms to be social online. Forums tended to focus on specific topics, with chat rooms just a real time free for all. What got me thinking though was realising that a lot of these used to include elements of Gamification, forums especially.
There was this stuff called kudos or Kama. When you said something of interest or that was helpful, users could reward you with these – a bit like when someone likes you on Facebook or +1 ‘s you on Google+. Kama and time served would also very often go towards some sort of rank on the forum. Higher rank and Kama signified a user you could trust and who was useful or interesting on the forums.
Google+ is hot property right now. Technology bloggers the world over are writing thousands of words a day about it (myself included).
Sitting in a kind of partway space between the simplicity of Twitter and the do a bit of everything nature of Facebook, it is a technology that is still finding its true place in the social media world.
So far, it seems that where Facebook is for communicating with friends and family and Twitter is for engaging with new audiences and meeting new friends, Google+ is for talking at acquaintances!