Tag Archive for 'live-blogging'

Live Blogging – FriendFeed Registration

From the buzz I hear & read on a daily basis, having a FriendFeed account is a must. 

  • First Impression: Simple & clean.  As you will read immediately below, creating an account is done in two steps & doesn’t require a lot of time or hassle.

  • Registration Process: Creating your account name is quick & easy; it should take you less than a minute.  The next step lets you find people you know through Facebook or your existing email accounts.  The Facebook application did not work after a few attempts, but finding people through my Gmail & Yahoo mail accounts was simple.  Unsurprising to me; I can only find two people I know, but luckily, before completing the registration process I am taken to a screen of popular friend’s friends.  Subscribing to their feeds is done with the click of a button.  Nine appear at a time & new subscription recommendations auto fill each time a new one is added.  Once you are done with all of this, you are taken to your friends page & can begin seeing what they publish or add your own.
  • friendfeed-create-account

     

friendfeed-find-friends

 

  • What It Is: An aggregator for just about every social media account you manage online.  Currently there are 41 services you can add to your FriendFeed.  There are four main tabs – friends, rooms, me, & everyone.  Friends shows you all subscription updates with the most recent displaying at the top of the page.  You can join or create your own discussion room; a great way for niche topics, interests, etc. to become more in-depth conversations.  Your me tab removes everything but your updates.  In the everyone tab, you see just that; everyone’s updates.

 

  • Potential: If you are ahead of the game & you frequently update things like your blog Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, & StumbleUpon & have a healthy FriendFeed subscription list your ability to reach many increases.  It is a great way to engage & share your content with others while pulling the same type of content from your friend’s feeds.

 

  • Why You Should Join: Once you sign up for FriendFeed & realize the connection potential, you will instantly realize the value of this service.   Many of us spend a lot of time updating others about the various types of content we post; problem is we are usually wary of spamming our friends.  However, if someone finds you compelling enough to subscribe to your feed, chances are they will want to participate in many of the things you wish to share.

 

  • Why You Should Avoid: I honestly cannot think of one.  Yes, FriendFeed could be a little prettier in presentation.  BUT like RSS, you can easily keep yourself up to date with content you find interesting or valuable.

 

Live Blogging – Plurk Registration

I think we can all agree there is a plethora of social media tools/sites out there. Some might say it’s getting a bit ridiculous & I would agree. While I would love to think that each is created to give people new & interesting ways to connect, the cynic in me says this is just an attempt to get in the game with the ultimate goal of generating advertising dollars. Oh wait, that’s what pays my bills.

That said; I feel compelled both personally & professionally to check these out. For your benefit; I’ll keep a log of my thoughts & experiences during the sign up & initial investigation phases.

Plurk: Your life, on the line

  • First Impression: Holy crap; there’s using design to be different/endearing/edgy & there’s plain stupid. A weird fish asking a headless pig, “What is up, headless doc?” This seems like something looking to compete with Twitter. Note to head Plurk guy or gal; Twitter is dumb enough a name, don’t mistake our affinity for the tool to be something related to having to talk about Tweets, retweeting, & using the @ or # symbols.

Plurk Home Page

  • Registration Process: One step to sign up. You can search for friends from your AIM, Yahoo, or MSN instant messenger accounts, Twitter, or email. The latter two are much more helpful. Twice submitted AIM account info & got a HTTP 400 Bad Request page. A subsequent attempt using my Yahoo IM info yielded the same. Lame. I am then brought to my home page with an invite to the tutorial.

Plurk Profile

  • What It Is: You can view both your own & your friends’ plurks, over time. Conversation is displayed in a timeline manner &, just like Twitter, you get 140 characters per post. Very easy to navigate & using the tool (updating, changing account settings, editing your profile, & finding new Plurkers) is easy. There’s even a link – Interesting Plurkers – which allows you to browse people you may want to add. Mobile & IM capabilities exist; although I think this is standard now for the Social Media world. The last note in the tutorial explains that Plurk is not 100% instant, meaning that you should check back for new plurks, comments, or friends.

Interesting Plurkers

  • Potential: Like all social tools, there needs to be enough people with similar interests who will start meaningful conversations. I sort of like the manner in which the conversation is displayed & I find it amusing that you can segment friends into Cliques. Plurk has done a few things to differentiate themselves such as creating color-coded words that are commonly used to start and the ability to share multi-media without opening a new browser or leaving the page. There are also Karma points; not sure what these are as there is now mention within the FAQs (dumb), but a Google search tells me they’re awarded based on activity.

Plurk YouTube Clip

  • Why You Should Join: If you can get all of your Twitter friends to abandon it, completely, & move over to Plurk, it might be worth your time. The multi-media components give you the opportunity to share more dynamic content & the timeline view is easier to read & navigate, in my opinion, than a simple list, a la Twitter.

Plurk Conversation

  • Why You Should Avoid: If you are already actively using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., & have a healthy influx of new content into your RSS reader, adding something that takes more time to monitor, update & investigate will eat into the little free time you have.

Look for more upcoming; I’ll be doing one a week (or so) & will include brightkite, Plaxo, Jaiku, & Utterz. If there are any others you would like me to scope out, let me know.

It’s worth noting that I am not heavily engaged in all of these tools; I have a life & would like to keep it that way. That said, I’m sure there are some things I’ve missed or possibly misinterpreted. If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it! If not, go plurk yourself…





Canonical URL by SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin