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Twitter, Flickr and Jing Oh My! - More on Social Networking

Flickr and Twitter and Jing Oh My!

How can you point and mobilize more people to your website? There are a host of new (and well developed) on-line tools that can help you grow your communities in new and inventive ways. We’ll look at Flickr (photosharing), Twitter (micro-blogging) and Jing (screencasting)—easy to use tools that quickly link your pictures, video, blog posts and presentations to your web site and the people you want to motivate.

1. "User Generated" Content Creators

Web 2.0 is a broad term applied to the changed ability of internet users to move from consuming content to producing and sharing text, pictures, audio and video with one or many people. According to Entrepreneur.com in a May 2007 article:

A number of factors have contributed to this frenzy:

  • Increased bandwidth. Anyone with a broadband connection can easily load larger files now. Just try uploading a large picture or video with a 56KB modem, the technology of 10 years ago--a nearly impossible task.
  • Better tools for posting content. Before blogs it took much more effort for writers to publish their written content. Now people can sign up and create a blog in minutes. Web 2.0 sites have focused on making it easier to publish any type of content including images, videos, podcasts and documents.
  • Technology digitization and capture improvements. Digital cameras and video capture tools have advanced in the past 10 years, allowing amateur electronic device users to easily capture and distribute pictures and videos in electronic format.
  • Better internet penetration and connectivity. It's easier and cheaper to connect to the internet than it was 10 years ago.
  • Social networking. Websites are making it easier to interact with content on the web. You can add your thoughts, share, rate, e-mail and advertise content.
  • Advertising and the capitalism of the web. People realized they could make money by posting enough content and developing an audience and certain level of traffic.

See also:
Top User Generated Content Sites
The Evolution of Communciation (Quick Read)

2. The MobileActive Society

Significant and growing numbers of Americans use wireless and handheld devices to access internet applications that range from picture taking, texting, playing music and looking for information.

Wireless Access of the Internet - The Pew Internet & American Life Project's recent research shows that 62% of American adults have either accessed the internet wirelessly or used non-voice data applications, such as texting, emailing, taking a picture, or
recording video, with a handheld. On the average day, 42% of those with cell phones or other wireless enabled handhelds use the devices for at least one non-voice data application. more innovations in wireless access are on the horizon. In particular, “cloud computing” will
emerge in the coming years—moving applications and data storage away from the desktop or laptop to remote servers managed by high-speed networks. Computing applications and users’ data archives will increasingly be accessible by different devices anytime, anywhere over fast and widely available wireless and wired networks. (1)

Mobile access builds on the cell phone, a device that is easier to use and more affordable than a computer. Adoption patterns have therefore been very different for the device, which is a key platform for “on the go” information access. Cell phone users are more likely to be found in groups that have generally lagged in internet adoption, such as senior citizens, blacks, and Latinos. In our December
2007 survey, 50% of Americans age 65 and over had cell phones compared with 36% who used the internet. Some 84% of English-speaking Hispanics reported having cell phones and 71% of blacks had cell phones, compared with 78% and 63%, respectively, for online access. (2) More striking than access patterns is usage. For use of non-voice data applications on handhelds, Hispanics and African Americans lead the way relative to white Americans. Half of African Americans and 56% of English-speaking Latinos with cell phones, on a typical day, do at least one of 10 non-voice data applications such as taking pictures, accessing the internet for news, playing music, or texting. By contrast, 38% of whites do these kinds of activities on a wireless handheld device on the average day.
Even lower-income Americans with cell phones (61%) are active in using non-voice data applications on cell phones; 44% of cell users in households with incomes below $30,000 annually do one such non-voice data activity on a typical day.

Online Video - The Pew Internet & American Life Project's first major report on online video shows: Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day. Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work watch or download video online. Also, many video viewers have contributed to the viral and social nature of online video. More than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them.

See also: MobileActive for new uses and data on use of mobile devices for community building.

3. Building Social Networks with new Media Tools

FLICKR - Photosharing
"What is Flickr (and Hot Tips for Using It:
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application. Its primary goals are to help people make photos available to those who matter to them, and to enable new ways of organizing pictures. You can join Flicker for free and begin sharing images immediately. Pro accounts are available for those who want to add and display high volumes of photos.

How Can Flickr Help Nonprofits?
Beth Kanter explains that: "Flickr is much more than a place to store photos or make prints, however. Members can join and create groups and participate in discussions on literally any topic. Flickr also offers social networking features that connect people and can help widen your organization's online connections through photo-sharing.
Yet what distinguishes Flickr from other photo-sharing sites is its community features, which allow members to network and extend their interests beyond their own photos. Like other photo-sharing sites, Flickr allows you to upload your photos, order prints, or make things, said Flickr's Director of Community Heather Champ, yet it also gives you the chance to connect with others through your photos. "Like other photo-sharing sites, you can also create a one-to-one experience where you upload your photos and share them with a known set of people," said Champ. "But the essence of Flickr is more elastic. Flickr creates an environment where people come together to share their interests around photos. If you look at the old adage 'A picture is a thousand words,' that's what groups are for in Flickr. Using the Group features, people can share their photos and their thousand words. For example, like other photo sites, you can organize your photos into sets — your trip to Hawaii. But on Flickr, you can find many different groups about Hawaii, the flora or fauna, and connect to other people through their photos."
Another way Flickr differs from other photo-sharing sites is its strong sense of immediacy, giving members updates on what photographs are being taken as they happen. Each account has a photo stream, which displays photos uploaded by members chronologically. When you log into Flickr, you can see photos from your contacts' photo streams; you can also subscribe to these via RSS. Flickr also allows you to search by a common tag, which can be very compelling.
According to Champ, there are more than 2 billion photos on Flickr, with 1 to 2 million new photos uploaded every day. Flickr is a global community: more than half of its members live outside the United States, and the site is available in eight languages. Flickr community members not only participate together online, but also meet each other offline through grassroots Flickr meetups taking place around the globe, from Russia to Iraq to Australia, and all over the United States. "Flickr is truly a global community focused on photography," said Champ.

Beth's To Do:

See also:Great Flickr Tools and Flickr Basics on del.icio.us

JING: Screencasting

According to Wikipedia: A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. Although the term screencast dates from 2004, products such as Lotus ScreenCam were used as early as 1994.[1][2] Early products produced large files and had limited editing features. More recent products support more compact file formats such as Adobe Flash and have more sophisticated editing features allowing changes in sequence, mouse movement, and audio.

We like: Jing because it is so easy to use. Here is a quick overview. The Jing Blog is very helpful.

Beth Kanter provides great examples in her work here. Particularly how to embed your powerpoint into your blog.
For an in-depth overview of Screencasting, see:

TWITTER: MicroBlogging

According to Wikipedia: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook .Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.

Twitter Stats:
The number of Twitter users has risen precipitously since the application was launched as an in-house messaging system in 2006. There are probably 1 million users at this point.

Tech Crunch Reports these numbers (as of March 2008):
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

Visualize Twitter:

Why Use Twitter? Isn't it a total waste of time?
- Find out what your friends are up to
- Follow Thought Leaders in your field (Howard Reingold, Beth Kanter, Joe Trippi, Andy Carvin)
- Follow groups, events and conferences (NTC08, NCMR)
- Follow news (BBC, NYT, Boing Boing)
- Monitor trends
- Drive followers to your content (Guy Kawasaki)

See also:
The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter
Several Habits of Wildly Successful Twitter Users

LGD's To Do:

Twitter is not always reliable, but when that happens, you can post here: http://twitabit.com/
Review an endless array of interesting applications.

See also:

Special Thanks to Beth Kanter, Surdna Foundation, A.D. Henderson Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, The Media & Democracy Fund. For more information on www.cctv.org and our nonprofit capacity building projects, contact Lauren-Glenn at davitian [at] cctv [dot] org.