Social Media is a Waste of Time

I am sure you’ve heard this before, what with 54% companies banning social media sites. Of course, Twitter and Facebook are complete waste of time. Reading and writing blogs is a complete waste of time too. I also hear some executives say email is a waste of time too. And phone? What does everyone talk about anyway? They should get off the phones and just work (and I have had managers complain that personal calls were affecting productivity of some people). I think books are a waste of time too.…

Read More

Rules for Kids and Teenagers for Facebook Usage

So I succumbed to pressure and signed up my daughter on Facebook. Most of her friends are already on Facebook. In just a few hours, she has 7 friends and 3 more pending requests. Her FB wall is now active and flowing. I browsed her wall updates and some of her friends’ profiles and I am… PETRIFIED, and that’s an understatement. So I plan to give her a printout of the following rules for Facebook.   Don't talk to strangers. Just as we tell you not to talk to strangers…

Read More

Twitter Twitter Everywhere…

Everyone’s talking about Twitter. So here's my addition to the conversation based on my experiences with Twitter as @manishmo.What is Twitter? To me it is various forms of IM, asynchronous chat, chat room, email, SMS on the Internet, blog (micro-blog) depending on how you use it. I also like this explanation by Chris Brogan: Twitter is a stream. Facebook is both a stream and a stopping point (but mostly a stream). Your blog is a stopping point pretending to be a stream. It’s important to think about where you want information…

Read More

Network Feedback

This month’s Learning Circuits Big Question asks where is the best place to ask if you need input from people, what works and doesn’t work, what did you consider using, what was the outcome, ... Continuing with my experiences with social networking, I have tried to use blogging to connect with people and get answers. However I haven’t been very successful in generating a dialog through my blogs. Perhaps my blog has very small readership, or perhaps people aren’t comfortable commenting. As part of my journey in social networking I…

Read More

My Experiences with Social Networking

I am relatively new to social networking and social media. I remember my first encounter with social media was on a new Indian social networking site about 17-18 months ago. The social networking site’s interface was a combination of Orkut and Facebook-style networking (which I figured later after I started using Orkut and Facebook). So here I was on this social networking site but I couldn’t see anyone to network with (it didn’t let you see anyone’s profile unless you were their ‘friend’). On their open chat room, I asked…

Read More

How to Select Candidates Online

Seth Godin writes about how he selected candidates for marketing and web internship. He was overwhelmed by the quality of applications he got, so he created a Facebook group for candidates to meet and hang out online. As he explains:It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:The game-show contestants, quick on the trigger, who were searching for a quick yes or no. Most of them left.The lurkers. They were there, but we couldn't tell.The followers. They waited for someone to tell them what to…

Read More