You’ve probably noticed the weekly “links” post that gets dropped into the feed and picked up in other places like Facebook and Twitter on Sundays. If you’re interested in seeing those same links, only in real time when I add them individually instead of in the weekly wrap up, you have myriad choices to do that as well. They start out on my Diigo account, then through the magic of If This Then That, they go out on both my Twitter, and the Facebook page for this site.

If you’re following either of those, you’ll see the links as they get added, give or take 10-15 minutes. You’ll also see various other things I share as I come across them in those channels, that aren’t necessarily showing up here on the blog.

Speaking of the Facebook page, for what seems like years now, I’ve been feeding the blog posts to both the Facebook page, and my own Facebook profile. I’m toying with the idea of stopping that, and only linking to select posts on my own profile, letting the page be the place to follow the blog in it’s entirety on Facebook. This way my friends and family don’t have to see every new post. Any thoughts on that type of change? Would you “like” the page to see the blog posts on Facebook, or are you already getting them elsewhere and don’t care where I post them on Facebook?

I’m also toying with a few other ideas, but not ready to commit to them just yet, and trying to figure out how a Google+ page fits in here as well. I’m trying to use it more, both my own profile and the pages, but that lack of automated import is hard to get over!

I’ll be sure to keep ya’ll posted!

Before I made any comments about Google Plus’ new Pages feature, I wanted to take a look for myself. So I created a page for my website.Feel free to add it to your circles if you’re interested.

The first obvious lacking feature, much like the most obvious lacking feature of Plus in general, is the complete lack of any tool to bring in updated content from my website, into the Google Plus platform. As this has gone on, I am coming to the conclusion that this is not an oversight, or a technical glitch that Google hasn’t quite worked out yet. This is a company willingly ignoring the requests for that feature, because they do not want you posting content from outside the Google walled garden. So, instead of posting content here, and allowing the wonders of RSS to share that content on any social network you want to follow me on, be it Twitter, Facebook, or just in an RSS Reader, I will have to actually go over to Google Plus, and share this post manually.

What a waste when Google could save all of us that effort very easily, if they wanted to. Obviously, they don’t.

This has been a big week at Google, what with big changes to Gmail and Google Reader. Some folks are not thrilled with the new more Plus-friendly Google Reader.  I can sort of see their point. I didn’t use Google Reader’s “Shared Items” feature, mostly because they never integrated it with Feedburner’s Link Splicer in the same way Delicious was integrated there. (Even after Google bought it, they never integrated the two, in fact, they’ve never done much of anything with Feedburner to be honest, leading to the current state of Delicious not working any more.)

However, I know lots of folks did use Google Reader’s shared items, both as a bit of a mini user community, and as a way to grab that feed and show it on their blogs, feed the RSS to Twitter, etc. Now those options are pretty much gone from Google Reader, but they did make it easy to share items in Google Plus, which has been sorely lacking up until now. It’s unfortunate that they decided to make Plus the replacement for the much more open format of Shared Items, but that’s their prerogative.

In fact, as we see from the horse’s mouth itself, forcing all your Google product usage to be tied into Google Plus is pretty much exactly the idea. Frankly, this interview is a little scary. My hope that Google Plus will eventually have an open API that allows me to post something on Twitter and have it picked up by Google Plus, the way I currently can with Facebook and LinkedIn, seems to be in direct opposition to where Google is actually going with Plus.

Too many pundits and tech bloggers have made the mistake of thinking of Google+ as a Facebook competitor, but it’s absolutely not — at least not as far as Google is concerned.

Of course, Google is still in the business of competing with Facebook for ad dollars. That boils down to compiling the best, most actionable data about consumers to sell to advertisers.

And if Plus catches on, Google stands a much better chance of accomplishing that goal, not by orchestrating a Great Migration of users from one social network to another, but by subtly linking all your Google-powered online activity and profiles so advertisers can see a more complete picture of you than Facebook could ever offer.

If Google’s goal, with Plus, is to truly tie you as an individual, across all of Google’s properties, I don’t see any reason for Google Plus to have an open API that shares data from outside of Plus. It’s as much, if not more, of a walled garden that Facebook or Twitter will ever be.

Of course, since they rolled out Plus as a “social network” and really allowed it to be portrayed as a direct competition to Facebook, it’s also possible that this is all revisionist history. It’s possible they thought they could kill Facebook and Twitter, and now that they realize that they can’t, and haven’t delivered anything close to the promise of Plus that was all the talk of the pundit world just a few month ago, they are moving the goal posts. Frankly, if they wanted a single sign-on account across all their properties, they could easily have created that, without all the fan fare of Google Plus. I don’t think that was it at all. Plus is more than single sign-on across Google properties, it’s Google’s way to not only track how you use their services, but also track the things you share with your friends, the things you say to your friends, who you email with, who you have in your circles, how you describe those circles, etc. Basically, an advertisers wet dream.

Also known as everything we always feared Facebook was trying to do, but with the same people who decried Facebook’s privacy applauding them, a pretty impressive feat.

For myself, after reading the interview, I’m even less likely to spend any time messing with Google Plus. If it is to be limited to bringing in information from Google’s other properties, I’m not interested. I’m not interested in moving years worth of work in Flickr to Picasa just to make it easier to share in Plus. I’m not interested in moving my websites back to Blogger just to make it easier to share in Plus. I can share those things just fine on Twitter and Facebook, and more importantly, my social networks are already there too.

Recently, I came across a mention of a site that parses your Twitter feed, and tries to locate the popular links being shared by the people you follow. It’s called Strawberry Jam, and, as of right now, it’s still in beta. (I do have a couple of invites, leave a comment if you’re inclined to check it out.)

It’s a nice little service for those days when you really don’t have time to follow along on Twitter much, but you still want to see what sort of links are being shared among your connections. The service, upon login, will grab a list of both the most popular links being shared, as well as the most recent links, show you who shared them, and allow you to mouse over their avatar to see what, exactly, they tweeted about it.

All in all, a pretty useful bit of technology!

Interesting food for thought from Forbes the other day, that has drawn quite a bit of attention around the online world. What Prospective Employers Hope to See in Your Facebook Account.

The chart displaying the reasons candidates were rejected has obviously gotten the most attention, but the other chart, about what they saw on a social networking profile that made them hire someone is probably more worth looking at.

The interesting thing on the reasons candidates were rejected graph, to me, was the 11% rejected due to their profiles demonstrating poor communication skills. That’s not something we really tend to think about, we tend to focus more on the wildly inappropriate photos, or comments, but it does make sense. If your resume touts your brilliant writing skills, and yet you are constantly using poor grammar in your posts, don’t seem to know the difference between “there”, “their” and “they’re”, or simply can’t seem to put together a coherent sentence on your FB profile, should they believe your resume, or what you write every day? There’s nothing quite like the frustration of working with someone who cannot communicate well, and there’s nothing quite as embarrassing to an organization than an employee who cannot write professionally. Giving employers evidence that you might just be a poor, unprofessional communicator, gives them a reason to look for another candidate. In this economy, it only takes one reason to rule you out of the pile of potential hires.

On the flip side, we see that the things that employers like to see on your profile are things like good communication skills, creativity, a bit of personality, etc. Obviously, if you take the time to cultivate a more professional image on your social networks, it helps show off the skills your resume is bragging about.

In my experience, nothing says you are passionate about your field like using social networking to both learn more about, and share your own knowledge, of that field. Even more, if you are sharing information about your field, and writing about your field, prospective employers have a whole catalog of writing samples to show them just how well you can communicate in writing, about the exact topics you would be communicating about in the position. That’s not a bad thing to have out there.

Just a little something to think about the next time you post something to Twitter or Facebook, good writing matters.

I’ve been critical of Google Plus, but after seeing how Facebook is stepping up their game, making friends lists easier, and letting people subscribe to things I make public on my profile without having to be confirmed friends with me, I think maybe I should thank Google for pushing the limits and giving FB some competition.

This does go to show that competition brings out the best in services, and encourages innovation, which is good for everyone, no matter which service you use most.

Personally, I’ve always used friend lists, so that feature is nice, but not earth-shattering. The subscription feature is also interesting, though I wonder if I make my blog posts public on Facebook as they get pulled in to my Facebook profile through RSS Graffiti, is there any point to having a fan page for it any more?

Yes, for the child abuse site, where they don’t get pulled into my personal profile, the fan page is still the best option, but maybe there’s no point in having one for a site who’s feed gets pulled into a personal profile. What do you think?

I saw a post on Google Plus today by Niki Black, that resonated with me.

You’d better roll out some new things ASAP Google+ or you’re going to tank. Allow 3d party developers access to your API so I can post to Google+ from my feed readers. Or I’m going to stop cross-posting because it simply takes too much time. I really mean it this time. Engagement and activity are dropping rapidly as each day passes. Incorporate a few major changes and do it…NOW!

It resonated with me because it really echoed something I had thought about over the long holiday weekend. I was back in Ohio, and busy with weddings and spending time with my wife, over the weekend. I didn’t spend a lot of time online, in fact, the only online access I bothered with was my iPhone. I looked at Twitter, I looked at Facebook, I checked email, and opened a few other apps. I didn’t open Google Plus. I didn’t really think I would miss anything by not checking it, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually. Granted, it’s early, but it’s starting to get the Wave/Buzz feel to it, lots of hype and then a quick fizzle.

When I first critiqued Google for rolling out a social network without an API so that you could cross-post easily, I was told, no worries, they’ll add that. That was more than 2 months ago.  It still doesn’t exist. Two months ago, I was hopeful that Google would continue to grow Plus, but it’s basically still the same service it was then. (Oh they added Games, which was a feature everyone hated about Facebook to begin with!) They grew in popularity and promised us that as the network grew they would be rolling out new features, and planned to do great things with it, but it hasn’t really happened yet. Sure, two months isn’t a long time, but this is the internet age, our attention span just isn’t that long. Besides, after basically doing that exact thing with Wave and Buzz, Google needs to do better with Plus. We’ve been down this road before with Google, big promises of changing the way we do social networking, only to leave us with half-developed tools.

So, Google, you’ve gotten our attention, now show us something. We’ve got plenty of other options if you don’t.

It would appear that they are, and this is, frankly, a good thing.

Obviously, making the limited sharing features that already existed in Facebook but were difficult to find upfront and center, in the same way Google did with Circles, is a direct response to the growth of Plus. What’s also obvious, is that Google will have to continue to roll out new features to keep Plus from going the way of Google Wave. Facebook already has the community, it already has your connections, and now it’s also making the features people love about Plus available just as easily.

Facebook has a ton of advantages over Google in this space, simply because of the user base. Google Plus’ growth has been impressive, but they still don’t compare when it comes to the potential audience, and number of connections available to you, let alone the established history of communication that you already have within the Facebook platform.

Plus has a lot to overcome, can Google be truly innovative enough to sustain the growth they’ve seen when Facebook has the 800lb gorilla of an established, and much larger user community?

Earlier today, I caught site of an interesting blog post thanks to Niki Black.

A Box You Want to Uncheck on LinkedIn

Apparently, LinkedIn has followed in Facebooks footsteps, and automatically enabled a feature that lets them use your information and image in advertisements on the site.  (As well as some other defaults to allow their marketing partners to contact you, etc. )

Go ahead, take a look and fix your settings, then come back……

Anyway, the popular comment that I’ve seen about this is that LinkedIn should have learned from when Facebook has done this and gone a different route.

I think they did learn from Facebook, and what they learned is that they’ll take a bit of a beating in the online world, but it will pass in a couple of weeks. They also learned that 90% of the people who use LinkedIn won’t ever notice that this change has been made, and even those who do and get upset about it, over 90% of them aren’t about to delete their accounts. Not having a LinkedIn account is professional suicide in 2011. So LinkedIn will take a little bad PR, but in the end nothing will really happen to them, and the vast majority of folks will leave their settings unchanged from the default, and LinkedIn will rake in some money from marketers who want to use that.

Meanwhile, over in the Facebook camp, they’ve done this so many times that people are now completely freaked out over things that they haven’t even done. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that there’s been a rash of people freaking out because Facebook has “published” all the phone numbers stored in their phones. In reality, what Facebook has done is synched your contacts from your phone, with the FB mobile app, the same way it uses your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo contacts to try and find people you might know on Facebook. In each case, the user has asked them to do this, without really thinking about the fact that Facebook would hang on to that contact data in order to continue to help find people you might know. So, your phone contacts are stored there, but they are not “published” on Facebook, you are the only one who can see them.

Of course, with Facebook’s reputation for setting everything on by default and making you opt out, most people do not even question that Facebook has published their phone numbers to the world at large. Yet, they stay on Facebook, for the same reason that people will stay on LinkedIn. If you want to be connected, you have to be. It’s too much work trying to build a network without these tools. (Twitter and Google Plus, eventually, will fall in this same category.)

So, until someone comes along and builds a better mousetrap, you’ll be at the mercy of these companies and their attempts at making a profit off of their membership. Even when someone does, unless you want to build your own, you’ll be at their mercy too. (see Google Plus…)

Or, Why you want to come visit!

Thanks to friends pointing out these stories on Facebook and Twitter!(And people say they don’t learn anything important in social media?)

How A Park Helped One Town Weather The Recession
Southern U.S. distillery to legally sell moonshine

By the way, my favorite part from the latter story:

The area was settled, along with the nearby Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Scots, Irish and Welsh who migrated down through the Appalachian mountain chain from Pennsylvania in the 1700s.

“They thought it was their inalienable, God-given right to make whiskey,”

Yup, those are my people!