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So if your on facebook like I am (a lot) then you know “they” (Mr. Zuckerburg and crew) love to tweak, change, modify and refresh the facebook page layouts just about when we get use to the current furniture and paint job.
This latest update will be to the news feed. This change can be considered more of a revamp. With an eye towards consistency this layout change will traverse all platforms both mobile and desktop. It will be more image heavy, with the ability to add cover photos to status updates. There will be news feeds based on your interests and status updates. Zuckerburg stated during a March 7th press conference that the new news feed will be your own “personalized newspaper.”
From the early visuals of the news feed, it looks as though facebook is moving towards a much less cluttered layout which I welcome 100%. As usual Facebook will be rolling this out to select users and then a wider audience in the next couple of weeks. So look out for this change.
New Facebook News Feed Layout
Many sites that require registered users now offer the capability of users registering an account or logging in through a single click via Facebook. Facebook’s user authentication flows are based on the OAuth 2.0 protocol. FB offers its own SDK for Javascript to provide client-side functionality for this authentication process. In order to carry out this OAuth flow on the server-side, through ASP.NET/C#, we used the DotNetOpenAuth libraries.
These libraries also made it easy to use an OAuth dialog with other OAuth 2.0 providers, like Google. This was really advantageous, because once a flow was implemented with one service provider, it was only a matter of changing a few URLs to do the same for another.
In order to authenticate new users, our server requests an access token using DotNetOpenAuth. This access token is granted as long as our app is registered with the service provider (Facebook, Google, etc.) and we thus have a valid application ID and secret. This request also contains the information we want to know about the user. If the user gives permission, the provider returns the access token, and then we can use it to pull the requested user information (using the Facebook Graph API or the UserInfo Google API).
DotNetOpenAuth is actually now being packaged with Visual Studio 2012, and is included in all its ASP.NET project templates. Microsoft also added its own contribution to the library with its own front end to DotNetOpenAuth. Simply logging in through a large number of popular service providers is now a matter of uncommenting some code provided in each template. Playing around with the new library to do more and to integrate it with our my own custom user tables is something I’d like to do in the near future.
Local Wisdom pins on pinterest
I just fell upon an interesting tid-bit today. As marketers, we’ve been all a buzz with Pinterest the image sharing social network. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.
Here’s how you can easily tell whether people have been pinning images from your website.
Simply type in this URL into your browser:
http://www.pinterest.com/source/[your website url here]
For [your website url here], there is no need for the “http://” or “www”.
For example, if your website was www.localwisdom.com then you would use the URL:
http://www.pinterest.com/source/localwisdom.com
Hope this helps and happing pinning!
Conducting company meetings can be costly and eat up valuable time, which is why it’s important to make sure they are as productive as possible. Check out the meeting cost calculator that Mike found a few months ago. Here at Local Wisdom, we try to keep our meetings efficient and enjoyable. There are a few things we do before, during and after the meeting to make sure that we accomplish our goals. We’ve outlined some guidelines below to help you.
Have Fun
First of all, it’s important to have fun throughout the day. Creativity emerges when people in the room are enjoying themselves and engaging in conversation, so it’s important to laugh often.
Meeting Leader
Every meeting should have a facilitator who enforces the ground rules and keeps everything running smoothly. The leader is responsible for creating the schedule and agenda. Overall, it is this person’s job to focus all of the people in the room so that they are able to stay on task and move forward.
Who to Invite
Be careful about who you invite and always make sure to do your homework first. Those who are involved with the projects that are going to be discussed should definitely be invited. However, it might be beneficial to also include people who can provide input on the topic or gain knowledge about what is being discussed.
Schedule Early
Provide as much advanced notice as possible. When meetings are planned ahead of time it is more likely that people will have clear calendars and be able to attend. Scheduling a meeting early also gives you a deadline to have certain work completed before the start of the meeting. Waiting until work is completed before scheduling the meeting can cause delays and missed opportunities.
Schedule Regularly
Set up recurring meetings if you find you need to talk about the same topics or projects with the same group. For example, we began scheduling “scrum” times for reviewing work and answering questions. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning we meet to review architecture and design at a standing time. We no longer have to juggle times and locations for meetings and reviews. It may take a week or two to get this rolling but everyone’s schedule will eventually adjust around it.
State the Objective and Agenda
Whether the meeting is scheduled or standing, it’s important to state the objectives and agenda to ensure everyone is on the same page from the start. The objective should define what should be accomplished by the end of the meeting. The agenda could include a list of topics, activities, or discussions that will help us to achieve our meeting objectives. The goals and agenda should also be written somewhere for everyone to see. We keep a standard area of the whiteboard dedicated to writing these out. Following an agenda will help keep the meeting organized and productive.
Introduce People
Once the objectives and agenda are reiterated, introduce everyone in the room quickly and explain why they’re there. Sometimes not everyone is required to be there the whole time, especially during reoccurring meetings. As certain topics become irrelevant to people, they should be free to go if they wish.
Parking Lot
It’s not uncommon for discussions to go into tangents. Identifying topics that are not specifically aimed at key points, but may be important later, are called our parking lot items. We take note of these topics and come back to them at a later time or maybe even a different meeting. This approach keeps the focus on the topic at hand and helps us achieve our meeting objectives.
Convergent and Divergent Thinking
Pinaki brainstorming during our marketing meeting
Use convergent and divergent thinking in order to stay organized during ideation meetings. Convergent thinking encourages participants to think out loud and speak their ideas without any parameters. Ideas, good, bad, or irrelevant, are all accepted. Divergent thinking brings everything together and identifies which ideas are pertinent and can be made actionable. Splitting the two ways of thinking provides time for imagination while keeping a realistic mindset.
Who’s Doing What and When
At the end of the meeting, review who is doing what and by when. Make sure everyone is clear on what they should be doing next. Give people time to ask questions and get clarity. A follow up email of the meeting minutes should be sent to the attendees.
Following these guidelines has helped Local Wisdom stay efficient while not being stuffy and boring. There are hundreds of other meeting tips and tricks, what are some ways that your company conducts effective meetings and how have they been beneficial?
Friendster < MySpace < Facebook < Google+
Let’s all admit that people get tired of these environments after a few years, and starting from scratch elsewhere is something people are willing to do. Especially now that these services are allowing you to take your data with you to the next social network, it’s only a matter of time for the next network after Google +
SMI provides social media intelligence, insight and news for business executives. Case studies, opinion and best practice research. This is a great little presentation on social media blunders in the past few years.
The other day I was talking to a friend who is in the process of starting up a business. It is an event-production business, and, from the brief conversation we had, was primarily going to be referral-based. She wanted a website, and found someone who was willing to give her something for free or cheap.
The problem is, she didn’t like their work! So she asked me if I would be willing to change and tweak it once it was finished. I thought for a second, and then told her bluntly: “You are heading down a bad path.”
Why? Because she would be putting a great deal of time into getting a product out there that wouldn’t be the best it could (and should) be. Because the money and time she does have should be spent on getting referrals and business going. Because what’s the point of making a website that won’t be updated and will have to be redone in a year?
So I told her a radical idea: “You don’t need a website right now. Use free services to promote your business. They are out there. The web is a different place than it was just a few years ago.” For a referral-based business on a shoestring budget, I gave her the following suggestion:
So that’s that….you can use all these free services to get started and turn your business idea into a perfectly humming machine, where you are connecting with people via Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook until the time, and money, is right for a custom website. Then we’ll talk…. ;)
The Triumverate - Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook
If anyone has read Daemon and FreedomTM by Daniel Suarez you’re now thinking of a new world order where the constant real-time voting, interactions, and contributions into a virtual social network govern the way a real life society functions. A new world where power is truly in the hands of the people and not the “ambiguous few”. If you haven’t read these books and enjoy true sci-fi that imparts your sense of philosophy, ethics, and society, I highly recommend it.
In this adaptation of the near future, people have a “social score” based on their trade, the level they have achieved in their trade, and rating by others. For example, in this world I’d be: a level 22 information architect with a 4 out of 5 rating from a base of 143 (totally made up example). It’s my social circle itself that gives me raises and praises.
Your probably reading this thinking of all the lawsuits and litigations that might ensue from the principles of defaming. You might get uneasy thinking that anyone can anonymously give you a rating that anyone (including your mother) can see. You could think of those who would game the system by cheating to give themselves an advantage and their competitors disadvantage.
I for one, am intrigued.
First, I’ve always been fascinated by what people think of my actions. Am I really the good guy that I think I am? I might be surprised.
Secondly, we all grow and adapt from feedback from our surroundings. If I did something that might have hurt someone else, I’d like to know so that I could try not to do the same in the future. It doesn’t help me if no one tells me how I just made them feel uncomfortable. Similar systems are already in place in company’s HR departments with 360 feedbacks and performance evaluations.
Finally, if I am doing something questionable and know that anyone can make public, I might be quicker to give apologies and also be more aware of my actions overall. There are a few people I can think of who should be more aware of their actions.
Where it stands today. I believe society has to be weened into this way of thinking. In fact we are being weened into it. There are a few sites that are introducing the concept (maybe you’ve heard of them):
On LinkedIn you can give “recommendations” to others. This is like a letter of reference. Useful and powerful, but ultimately you can only say good things. You can also “like” people’s comments and follow people and you can “pass” or degrade the comment.
On Facebook you can “like” artifacts that people post such as photos, comments, or objects that exist.
Twitter is a social rating system whereas the more people who follow you the more useful your twits are perceived to be.
eBay sellers have a rating system that increases or decreases their trust from buyers. This way you won’t pay someone who has been rated poorly in the past.
Ratemyprofessor.com does just that. Students can give college and university professors a review. This can potentially help students pick and choose classes. I wonder if administrative staff put any weight to this “user feedback”.
Unvarnished is in public beta and is seemingly the closest thing so far to the world Daniel Suarez created. It uses Facebook connect to rate people over a variety of categories. There’s been many controversy over this one: MSNBC, SMSEO, LATimes. The funny thing is all these sites are criticizing a rating site by giving it a poor rating.
It seems that the world is not be ready for something like this at the moment. I’d like to believe it’s a tool that would slowly help us create a better society. It will cause more contention in the beginning just as most new ideas do. I am curious to see the implications and hear the thoughts of people as me move forward into this area. Especially since we are all rating each other in more ambiguous ways.
Feel free to comment.
Photo credited to ~Milk-Cream
Mashable just put up an exclusive article from their Twitter sources that the Twitter button will be launched this week.
The Tweet button will count tweets, retweets, and shares across Twitter. Similar to Facebook like, the Twitter button can be added to any webpage with only a few lines of code.
Here’s the new trailer for the Facebook movie, The Social Network.
The director is David Fincher (Se7en & Fight Club). Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night, West Wing & Charlie Wilson’s War) is the screenwriter, and in my opinion, the guy can do no wrong. So I will be seeing The Social Network when it hits theaters in October.
Stay tuned for the sequel: The Social Network 2: Rise of Farmville
