A Day Inside Facebook

Yesterday, I spent a large amount of time inside the website known as Facebook. Most of this time was spent browsing people’s profiles or managing how I was connected to people. I’ll likely do more of the same today, but I thought I’d report on what I did, and what the plans are.
Spring Cleaning
I started [...]

Yesterday, I spent a large amount of time inside the website known as Facebook. Most of this time was spent browsing people’s profiles or managing how I was connected to people. I’ll likely do more of the same today, but I thought I’d report on what I did, and what the plans are.

Spring Cleaning

I started the day by removing the nearly 40 applications I wasn’t using. This brought me down to 22. Half of those are official, Facebook-created apps such as groups, and events, and 3 more are applications that I play a role in as a Developer. So I’m left with 8, really. Not bad.

I next went through and tweaked my Facebook privacy and limited profile settings. This was going to play a bigger role in my plans later in the day. I also moved a few things around on my profile, and tidied things up there.

Lunchtime Reading

I ate my soup and garlic bread while browsing the immense application directory. After recently removing applications, this might seem like an odd choice, but I wasn’t adding anything - yet. Facebook’s application platform (which, I promise, will be a whole post unto itself shortly) offers a lot of widely varying applications for use. I was looking for those that would help make my time insdie facebook more productive.

I’ve got a list and will be expermenting soon.

Managing People And Connections

More and more, Facebook is becoming my Rolodex. While some people use LinkedIn for this, Facebook allows me to not only connect to people, but to get a small glimpse into their lives and what they’re doing. For me, it’s really an advance marriage of LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’ve been making a big use of the friend groups within facebook to keep track of my connections, and a large amount of time (A few hours, in fact) went to re-organizing those. In all, I now have 37 of these groups. Some of these, like my “Canadian”, “American” and “International” cast wide nets, while other groups only have 3 or 4 people in them.

Every event I’ve attended (Except for one) has it’s own group, and people I met, or visited with, at an event goes into that group. This means that I can quickly pull up a group and see who was around. As I friend more people, I can then add them to their correct groups, and keep them sorted. Something I couldn’t do with my physical Rolodex. Not easily, anyway - and I tried.

When Worlds Collide

Facebook is, with the exception of email, the only place where my “work” world and my “real” world come together. It sure makes for an interesting dynamic when I sign in, too. It’s because of this that I’ve always been a heavy user of the limited profile option. People in my limited profile group, for example (Don’t check, you likely are) can’t see my friends list. Nor can they see photo galleries I post (Unless I specify they can) or my mailing addressor my home phone number.

I use the privace settings more to manage the fact that this is a place where two - very different - worlds come together and it allows me to be a complete goofball with my former room-mates, my wedding party, and my high school buddies, while being a complete goofball with new friends I’ve met through the world of social media. Sorting people took a LONG time, but it means that my Facebook world can have the balance it, apparently, needs.

Your Turn

I’m going to write more on my tricks within the Facebook walls soon (Including a full list of my privacy groups, and a look at my apps), but I want to know how you’re using the site. What does it bring to you? Who does it connect you with? What apps do you use? Why? Let me know.

Disconnected - My 3 Rs For Early 2008

So, welcome to 2008! While I’ve never been much of a guy to make large-scale promises or resolutions at the dawning of a new year, especially public ones, I’ve always been able to find something I’m willing to toss onto a wall to see if it sticks. Some of my personal hopes and goals for [...]

So, welcome to 2008! While I’ve never been much of a guy to make large-scale promises or resolutions at the dawning of a new year, especially public ones, I’ve always been able to find something I’m willing to toss onto a wall to see if it sticks. Some of my personal hopes and goals for 2008 include local volunteering and folding 1000 paper cranes. I’ll elaborate on both of those as the days and weeks unfold, but I want to take this chance to look at my digital goals in this upcoming year.

If you follow me closely, you’ll know that I turned off my Twitter account at midnight, just after a, highly appropriate, tweet consisting of “</2007> <2008>”. I’ve had a lot of very interesting responses to my doing this, but the most common has, by far, been along the lines of “Are you crazy?!”, “Are you joking!?” or “Is this… forever?”. Watching people react to seeing someone close up shop on Twitter has given me a really neat perspective (And lots of notes) on the Twitter community. I feel I should answer the three questions most asked though - Possibly, not at all, and no, it’s not.

One of my first tasks for the year is to renew my digital world. Over the next days and weeks, I’ll be going through each and every blog, podcast, video podcast, twitter feed and so on that I follow and -evaluating their value to my life. Twitter, as much as I love it, is a non-stop distraction to me, and so I feel it’ll just be a lot easier if I step out of the stream for a while. I still get @ messages, and DMs, and will randomly hop on to read messages, but the “always on” aspect will be turned off, and my tweets will be fewer and further between.

In addition to feeds, I’m also re-evaluating every tool I use, both on the web and on my desktop, to see if there is a better one out there for me. I’ll, quite likely, be the proud owner of a new laptop in the coming weeks, and I want to make certain that the tools I’m using are the ones that will allow me to get the most done, in the least amount of time, while fitting within my existing (and currently evolving) lifestyle.

My personal branding is also being refreshed during this opening portion of the year. I began that with a “mostly done” change of the blog appearance. If you’re picking this up via RSS, stop on by the site to take a look - I’d love to hear what you think. I’ve got time set aside for things like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter, too… So keep your eyes peeled wherever we’re connected to see how this unfolds.

There  are some other things that are being done to help with this process, too. I’m getting a new desk, for example,and re-positioning furniture in the office to help me make the most of physical space, I’m taking a look at some of the personal projects I own or play active roles in and will likely stop or change many of them (even if those changes aren’t visual) and am working my way through a number of personal productivity books in a desperate attempt to make my life more manageable.

So that’s what’s going on - and why I’ve been pretty quiet, recently. It sure seems like things are going to be busy. What about you, though? What do you have planned, digitally, for 2008?

PodCamp Ottawa: November 25th, 2007

So PodCamp Ottawa is happening on November 25th at the National Arts Centre - and I cannot WAIT for this one.
No chairs. No tables. No laptops. No net access.
Now, if any of you remember my ranty rant the other day about where I feel PodCamps should go, you’ll already understand why I’m excited. This PodCamp [...]

So PodCamp Ottawa is happening on November 25th at the National Arts Centre - and I cannot WAIT for this one.

No chairs. No tables. No laptops. No net access.

Now, if any of you remember my ranty rant the other day about where I feel PodCamps should go, you’ll already understand why I’m excited. This PodCamp is ALL ABOUT shutting down the drains and getting back to learning. In fact, the guiding principals being used are not unlike the list of rules I’ve got in a notebook for another project (Details next week).

I’ll be leading a conversation at 11:00 in “conversation 1″ called “Web Applications - What’s Out There?How Do They Help?Which Do You Use? Why?”. The interesting thing about PodCamp Ottawa is that I won’t be presenting this information. I’ll be leading a discussion on it. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do that yet - but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

There are a few Kingstonians heading up for sure, and I’m hoping a few more follow us after the meetup on Monday.

See you in Ottawa!