Embracing the Un: When the Community Runs the Event    

With the explosion of Web 2.0 come two new kinds of community events: BarCamps and BookSprints. Gentle and Swisher share their experiences with these unconferences.

Gentle, Anne and Janet Swisher. Intercom (2009). Articles>TC>Community Building>Social Networking

Technical Communicators Put the "Public" in Public Health    

How does Web 2.0 fit into the world of public health? STC Fellow, Dr. Thomas Barker discusses the values of social networking in regards to largescale public disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the SARS outbreak.

Barker, Thomas. Intercom (2009). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Social Networking

Web 2.0: The Tipping Point for XML    

Have you been waiting for the right time to switch to XML publishing? O’Keefe illustrates that with the advent of Web 2.0, the time is now.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Intercom (2009). Articles>Web Design>XML>Social Networking

Keep Your Web 2.0 Community Happy

Running a web community can be fun and rewarding, but you’re always reliant on the good faith of your members. So what happens when rogue elements threaten to disrupt, even destroy, the foundations of your virtual society? Derek Powazek has some suggestions

Powazek, Derek. Dot Net (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Mind the Gap

Twitter and other social media give customers the potential to create their own models of customer service, their own expectations of how help and support might be provided. They will find gaps through which to force departments to talk to each other, erode lines between companies, and perhaps ultimately for companies unwilling to change they may bypass them altogether and look to each other for help through applications such as Twitter.

Online Help Two.Zero (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Documentation>Social Networking

Informal Help via Electronic Conversation Can Lack a Certain Professional Quality

Much documentation and training is delivered in one direction—the writer provides content, and the user consumes it. Perhaps this is one reason that technical communicators are looking for ways to create a conversation. It’s easier to address user problems when you can ask follow-up questions and get details. In a one-way delivery, you have to hope that what you provide will cover what’s needed. In a conversation, you can constantly get more information and react accordingly. Still, in an instant message, chat, or forum conversation, it can be hard to be clear.

Gryphon Mountain (2009). Articles>Documentation>Wikis>Social Networking

Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business

You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with their Terms of Service.

Glaser, Mark. PBS (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Online>Social Networking

Dawn of the Twitter Effect

Yesterday a Twitter post (a tweet) by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore became so popular that traffic from Twitter crashed a blog. This sounds very similar to a common social media phenomenon originally known as the Slashdot effect (and later also the Digg effect), where a post on a popular social media site pushes more traffic than the target site can handle. An interesting thing here is the mechanics of Twitter, which is fundamentally different from Digg and Slashdot. It’s not a social news site, with a front page that all visitors go to.

Pingdom (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Social Networking

Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media

Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas.

Taylor, Alana. PBS (2009). Articles>Writing>Journalism>Social Networking

Twitter Is What You Make It

There’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a Web site where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room.

Pogue, David. New York Times, The (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Job Hunting in 140 Characters

Within hours of Tweeting “Who do I have to schmooze to get a job in this joint?” Chelsea Winkel received three direct messages, a much better (and as it would turn out, more substantial) turnout than anything else she’d tried so far. The key to making Twitter work for you is being proactive.

Duo Consulting (2009). Careers>Interviewing>Business Communication>Social Networking

Ten Ways to Make Social Media Matter to Skeptical CEOs  

Not embracing conversational marketing and letting go of some control is reckless because it puts a barrier up between you and your customers, I reminded some executive clients. Change that makes a big difference, however, requires just a small bit of courage.

Kelly, Lois. Beeline Labs (2009). Articles>Management>Business Communication>Social Networking

Social Networking Web Sites and Human Resource Personnel: Suggestions for Job Searches    

Social networking once meant going to a social function such as a cocktail party, conference, or business luncheon. Today, much social networking is achieved through Web sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn. Many individuals use these sites to meet new friends, make connections, and upload personal infor- mation. On social networking Web sites (SNWs) that focus more on business connections, such as LinkedIn, individuals upload job qualifi- cations and application information. These SNWs are now being used as reference checks by human resource (HR) personnel. For this reason, SNW users, particularly university students and other soon-to-be job applicants, should ask the following questions: Am I loading information that I want the world to see? Is this really a picture that shows me in the best light? What impression would another person have of me if he or she went through my site? Although SNWs are a great way to be connected with friends, family, and friends-to-be, they can present problems when potential employers begin to search through them for information concerning job applicants. Many potential employees would be mortified to learn that employers could potentially read the personal information posted on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other SNWs. Searches on SNWs allow employers to look into what is done 'after hours,' socially or privately, by the applicant. A résumé may be just a snapshot of a job applicant, while other personal information may be found online. Many job applicants have learned the hard way that what they post may come back to haunt them (Rodriquez, 2006). Human Resources and SNWs Many companies that recruit on college campuses look up applicants on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other SNWs. What they find on these sites presents a dilemma for the recruiters. Students post comments that they may think are private but can be read by many. These posts can be provocative comments on any subject from drinking to recreational drugs to sexual exploits. Although they may seem innocent enough to the students who have posted them, college recruiters or graduate admission officers may look at these postings as immature and unprofessional. Recruiters are warning universities' career resource centers that they are looking at SNWs and that it would be best to work with students about how they are presenting themselves on these sites. The lifestyle the students are presenting online may not be what corporate recruiters or graduate school admission officers want in potential applicants.

Roberts, Sherry J. and Terry Roach. Business Communication Quarterly (2009). Careers>Management>Interviewing>Social Networking

The Coming Facebook-Twitter Collision

Forget about rivalries with MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook's real competition is coming from upstart microblogging site Twitter.

Lacy, Sarah. BusinessWeek (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Social Networking

Social Media is Here to Stay... Now What?

For users, Web 2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends. For many users, direct communication tools like email and IM were used to communicate with one's closest and dearest while online communities were tools for connecting with strangers around shared interests. Web 2.0 reworked all of that by allowing users to connect in new ways. While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web 2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways. Even tools like MySpace and Facebook which are typically labeled social networkING sites were never really about networking for most users. They were about socializing inside of pre-existing networks.

Boyd, Danah. Microsoft (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Social Networking

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship  

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

Boyd, Danah and Nicole B. Ellison. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (2007). Articles>Web Design>Research>Social Networking

Best Practices for Designing a Social News Website

In this article I’ll showcase some of the current top social news sites, will identify trends and patterns in their designs and suggest some best practices to follow when designing such sites. Let’s begin by looking at four popular social news sites and see how their designs compare.

Fadeyev, Dmitry. Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Web 2.0 is About Giving Up Some Control

Web 2.0 and social media mean that for teachers a declining part of their job involves telling. An increasing part is listening to the class and facilitating them in having conversations. Teachers should help moderate these conversations and draw new learnings from them. They need to say less of: ‘let’s open up a book.’ and more of: ‘let’s open up a conversation.’. The traditional manager is taught to command and control. Web 2.0 challenges that model.

McGovern, Gerry. Red Canary (2008). Articles>Education>Web Design>Social Networking

Eight Things I Learnt About Using Twitter as a Participation Tool: Speaking About Presenting

I presented a session remotely at the Presentation Camp at Stanford University, California. My session was on “How to engage your audience with Twitter” and I tried to do exactly that during my presentation. Here’s what I learnt from my experience.

Mitchell, Olivia. Speaking About Presenting (2009). Articles>Presentations>Community Building>Social Networking

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer

Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use—Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less.

Blanchard, Jennifer. Copyblogger (2009). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Social Networking

Five Steps to Going Viral on Twitter

Twitter is changing the way information spreads online. Links that would have been blogged a couple of years ago are now more often shared via the micro-blogging service instead, which fundamentally changes strategy when trying to get content to spread.

Zarrella, Dan. Copyblogger (2008). Articles>Content Management>Writing>Social Networking

Coaching a Community

We’ve all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities are online and we start to think of them as “social sites,” these concepts can suddenly feel foreign. My work in communities (primarily as the editor of community-created magazine JPG) has shown me that different sets of people are usually motivated in similar ways. Most people have an innate need to belong and feel like part of something, and successfully contributing to that something can really reinforce self-worth. Whether you’re at a company such as Yelp working with product reviews, or Threadless working with t-shirts, or in a church group working on an annual recipe book, try some of these methods to nurture great content.

Miner, Laura Brunow. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

The Elements of Social Architecture

Humans can behave in surprising ways when you bring them together. In an information space, a human’s needs are simple and his behavior straightforward. Find. Read. Save. But once you get a bunch of humans together, communicating and collaborating, you can observe both the madness and the wisdom of crowds.

Wodtke, Christina. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Are URL Shorteners A Necessary Evil, Or Just Evil?

What started out as something people did via e-mail and bookmark-sharing services like Delicious, is now moving to Facebook, Twitter, and other social broadcasting services. It is just so much more efficient to share a link once with all your friends and followers than to send it to each one individually.

Schonfeld, Erick. TechCrunch (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Social Networking

Wanted/Needed: UX Design for Collaboration 2.0

There is plenty of hype about “Collaboration 2.0” at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year’s Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network (“putting the water cooler inside the computer”) there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What’s missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there’s no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it.

Clarke, Matthew C. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Social Networking