BrianHimes.com » Social Media

There’s Power in a “Like”

Brian — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:26:37 +0000

If you thought Facebook was good, harmless, fun, think again. I read this story recently on Mashable.com: Man Assaults Wife for Not “Liking” His Facebook Update (http://mashable.com/2011/10/09/man-assaults-wife-facebook/).

Apparently you should think twice about liking, or not liking, someone’s posts. Consider this your warning.

It is interesting though, the amount of validation we can get and give through social media. There’s power in a good comment, a retweet, or a simple “like.” We probably SHOULD think twice about how we use these tools to encourage. It could make the difference.

Leaving a Wake of Social Media

Brian — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:09:43 +0000

I tried taking stock of all my social media profiles today and I realized that its really easy to get carried away. I like to participate in all the newest trends but in a short amount of time you can leave a wake of abandoned accounts without trying too hard. I'm sure I missed a few in my list but I was amazed at what I found.

How many social media sites do you belong to? How many do you actively use?

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Amazing Tools for Communication

Brian — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:34:39 +0000

The past few weeks have been pretty rough for me with the hospitalization and passing of my grandfather.

He was an incredible man of God and a loving family man, both of which can be evidenced by his 6 children and 25 grandchildren.

When he was in the hospital I spent a few days traveling back and forth between my home in Burbank and the hospital, which was down in La Jolla. Many from my family made the trek, some coming from as far away as Colorado, Texas and New Jersey, but there were still those who were unable to get away. I am lucky to live relatively close and have an understanding boss who allowed me to take a few days off work.

It was during that time that I made an interesting, but not very profound, observation. My observation was that social media and mobile technology are amazing tools for communication. I told you it wasn’t very profound.

This was one of the first times in my life that communicating with other family members on a large scale was necessary and useful. It wasn't just about sharing what I ate for lunch.

I have always been a huge fan of social media and am usually one of the early adopters of new social media fads, but this was the first time it had REALLY been useful. One of the tools which I found most useful was, believe it or not, Facebook.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not the biggest Facebook fan. I much prefer to blog or tweet. However, Facebook allowed me, and others, to post updates that the entire family could see and comment on. And, since I have it available on my phone it was super easy to send out updates while in the hospital.

Now, I feel as though it is important to say that Facebook cannot replace the personal nature of a phone call or an in-person conversation; but, it can be a very powerful and useful tool in all types of situations. I am grateful to have had it as a communication tool over the past few weeks. It’s made things a little easier.

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What I’m Up To: New Social Media Focus

Brian — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:09:52 +0000

Over the past couple days I've been making tweaks to brianhimes.com. And while the transformation is not yet complete, I thought I'd share a little about what I'm up to.

I read a lot about social media, nonprofits and technology. It's the most prevalent subject in my Google Reader and it's what fills my email inbox at work every day. I'm inundated with information and yet, for the most part, I read these articles, internalize them, and move on. I want to change that. My new goal is to share this information with you.

However, with that said, I don't want to change the random nature of my blog posts. I still want to write about anything and everything that comes to mind. So, I've created a few new pages at brianhimes.com. If you head over now you'll see three new pages: Consulting, Resources, and Projects. Check them out.

The information on these pages is very basic right now, but this is a work in progress. I plan to continually update these pages and grow this part of my website. It's my hope that brianhimes.com becomes a useful tool for people looking to get involved with social networking. If you have any suggestions please pass them along. I'd love to have you involved.

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Google Buzz

Brian — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:16:37 +0000

Odds are you have now heard about Google Buzz. And, if you're a Gmail user, you might have even seen it in your Gmail inbox. Google's been rolling it out to everyone with Gmail accounts since Tuesday. But what is Google Buzz? People are still trying to figure that out.

If you're only point of contact with Google is Gmail, Buzz seems to be a Twitter-like aggregator for sharing ideas and content. It links with other social media services like Flikr, Twitter, etc.

If, like me, you use other Google services, Buzz becomes a little more interesting. For example, if you have a phone with the latest version of Google Maps, you can now see Buzz posts laid out on a map according to where the person who made the post was located at that point in time. There's also another view in Maps where you can see a Twitter-like list of all the posts of people physically near you. With this functionality, you can leave tips, comments and reviews for any location you visit, and people will see these posts when they check out the Buzz.

If you have an iPhone or an Android phone with Android 2.0+ you can also access a web app, which I can only guess incorporates the features available in Maps and Gmail. My Android phone only has Android 1.6 so I haven't been able to see the app. Please feel sorry for me.

All these features make Buzz a look a little like Foursquare + Twitter + Friendfeed on crack. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Foursquare has been growing quite rapidly in recent months so, for Google to drop Buzz right now is an interesting and maybe smart move.

The question that remains is will people adopt this new platform? Only time will really tell. I think it will largely depend on whether Google works out some of the kinks with Buzz, and if you haven't noticed there are some kinks.

Perhaps the biggest kink in my mind is that content pulled in from Twitter and other sites is slow to show up in your Buzz stream. And to make matters worse, communication with these services is only one way. For Buzz to succeed it'll need to be able to push and pull data instantly from services like Twitter and Facebook. Otherwise, what's the point?

I would be very happy to have Buzz essentially replace the need for all of these separate services, and the convenience of having access to it all in Gmail, makes it even more alluring. Interestingly though, with the addition of Buzz, Gmail has become more a communication's platform and less a webmail portal. It has chat, email, and now an aggregation/broadcasting tool. Strange huh?

It'll be interesting to see how that progresses. For now, I'm going to continue exploring Buzz and hope that Google continues to improve it over the course of time. I've been really impressed with their work in Gmail and I hope that Buzz can live up to it's name.

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