hello there! if you're new here and like what you read, you may want to grab the rss feed so you can always be up to date. thanks for visiting!

i just got an email from the folks behind one of my favorite podcasts, ask a ninja, and they’re launching a social network just for ninjas (and other cool people of course).

the social network is built on the ning platform and is an extension of the existing ask a ninja community. what this means is that if you have an existing account at either of those, you can use it to log in and start customizing your profile. to customize your profile, you begin by adding your email address and declaring your allegiance (the only two mandatory fields).

there are four main sections to the site.

my page

this is your profile page. this is where you can upload photos or videos, edit information about yourself, as well as see the latest activity from your friends and how they are interacting with your profile. you can also edit the appearance of the page and create and manage a blog.

members

the members page let’s you view snapshots of member profiles, which you can expand by clicking on them. you can also use the search box to search for members and invite your friends to join the network.

forum

this is where the meat of the conversation is taking place on the site. people can create and participate in discussions and optionally filter the conversation by ‘my discussions’. the section also includes a list of the most popular contributors.

clans

the clans section let’s you create or join a clan and view clan profiles. you can search clans by name or sort them by number of members or date of creation.

last words

on the whole it is a very simple social network (limited, perhaps, by the features offered by ning) but with a very viral theme. i look forward to killing networking with you soon!

Technorati Tags: ninja, askaninja, ask a ninja, social network

i have to admit, when i read that linkedin will begin letting people add pictures to their profiles, i was excited. in fact, it’s surprising that linkedin profiles didn’t launch with pictures.

adding a profile photo is one of the most commonly requested features for the linkedin profile, primarily because many people (like me) tend to recognize their colleagues and classmates more reliably by face than by name. they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and with this feature we hope to make it easier for people to form richer professional connections online.

original photo: photoplasia

i read articles from hundreds of different blogs every week and talk to dozens of content creators everyday but the blogs that i keep going back to and the people that i have developed long-term relationships with are the ones with the most comprehensive about pages (online bios on their sites) and author profiles with pictures. knowing more about the author and being able to see the human being behind the content makes it the connection much more ‘real’ and inherently makes me more willing to embrace them and their content. similarly, photos on linkedin aim to help people connect by face rather rather than just name.

uploading pictures to linkedin is not to be used like similar features on facebook or myspace. make sure you make the best use of the tools linkedin provides you with to appear most professional.

we know that people take their professional reputations seriously, and as a result we expect linkedin profile photos to be professional in nature. however, we also hope that the wisdom of the millions of linkedin users will help us identify photos that violate that. similar to linkedin answers, members will be able to quickly and easily flag photos that violate policy for review.

not everyone is happy with the addition. allen, for example, wonders if the addition of photos will lead to discrimination.

• Will employers be looking for the hottest cutie?
• Will a fat man be passed over just because he is fat?
• Will a woman who looks “old” be passed over?
• What about race issues?

Technorati Tags: linkedin

word got out a couple days ago that twitter would be implementing a real-time search feature very soon. the feature will let you type in any word into twitter and whenever someone tweets something with your query words in it, you can choose to be notified via an instant message or a text message to your mobile phone. initially the searches will be limited to all twitter users but in the future you will be able to limit whose twitter history you search based on the people you follow/are following you, geography, time of the tweet, and so on.

i’ve been waiting for this feature for a while now. it makes perfect sense, just like searchable, persistent chat logs on instant messaging clients. every couple of days i find my self wanting to bring up a conversation i had with someone based on the topic (or keywords) we were discussing, and the same applies to tweets from my friends.

that said, there are a couple of concerns. first, and the concern i have right now, is how does my twitter privacy factor into this? will anyone be able to retrieve a tweet from me or can i choose it so that only my friends (not even followers) can search my tweets? second, matt brings up an important point: twitter is not the most consistently reliable service and this update will probably cause further disruptions.

Technorati Tags: twitter, search, real-time, tweet search

when i’m in the mood to stumble, i usually go through hundreds of pages and photos in a sitting. it’s easy because a lot of the content i see on stumble, i have already either read in my rss reader or from digg/propeller/reddit. that said, i try to make a conscious effort to stumble my friends’ pages (by using the friends toolbar setting) as well.

here’s a look at some of the pages that always get a thumbs down from me regardless of how good the content is and who stumbled it.

1. pay-wall: if a page you have stumbled displays a pay-wall or expects me to register to view it, it gets a thumb down.

2. page no longer exists, has moved: this just makes sense because i don’t want my friends and followers to be spammed with pages that are no longer there.

3. other social submissions: stumbleupon is a site for sharing content. what this means is stumbling the pages where the content originated, not stumbling pages from other social sites (digg, propeller, reddit, sphinn) where you have submitted the original content. if you want me to vote on something that you have submitted on one of those sites, send it to me without submitting it to and clogging up the stumble index.

4. duplicate submissions or repurposed content with no insight: if you’ve just regurgitated information from elsewhere, please don’t submit it to stumble. it’s not always wrong to post some latest developments to your blog but if you haven’t added any insight, please stumble the original source and not your post.

5. improperly categorized or tagged content: i’ve set my preferences so that i only get pages and pictures, however because people incorrectly tag pages, i often get audio, video, or pdf files. i generally try to report these pages as incorrectly tagged and stumble them down.

6. auto-playing audio or video: one of the most annoying things on stumble is when people incorrectly tag audio/video and then have it play automatically as the page loads.

7. porn, la-la la-la, etc: posts where you are asked to thumb up if you want them to include adult video, or pages that say ‘end of the internet’ are submitted too many times and are equally annoying each time.

what are some of the pages that you thumb down?

Technorati Tags: social media, stumbleupon

sam sethi got a sneak peek at a soon to be announced instant messaging client for facebook.

what i like about this facebook app is there is nothing to download or install, no registration and best of all, all of your friends in facebook can use it instantly.

first of all, you do need to register - with facebook - before you can use the application (remember walled-garden?), and if i’m not mistaken, you do have to add the application to your profile. second, how many levels of communication within one network do we really need?

facebook currently has three different ways you can communicate with your friends.

the facebook wall

the first method you can use is the facebook wall. messages posted on the wall are generally visible to all of your friends (though you can change that setting) and people can click ‘wall-to-wall’ to see a back-and-forth exchange between you and another friend. the wall is generally limited to text and link-sharing.

facebook messaging

facebook messaging can be used to send a private message to one user or a group of users and allows you to send text but also links, pictures, videos, and so on. these messages can only be viewed by people who they are sent to.

facebook status

facebook status messages are a micro-blogging platform unto themselves. they work just like twitter, and let you post what you are doing at any point, on your profile.

do we really need facebook im?

that really depends on how liberal you are with your social network. i, for example, (for the most part) only add people that i actually know and communicate with otherwise. because of that, most of the people on my network are also on my im list and only a click away. for many others, however, facebook im may be an easy way to reach out to people who they don’t actually know and wouldn’t be comfortable giving their email/im information to just yet.

Technorati Tags: social networking, facebook, instant messaging, im, friendvox

if you don’t care about the story and just came here looking for the short answer: you can bypass the social security number by using the following number instead: 141-11-1111. this is the number at&t uses internally for cases where they want to permit customers to bypass the ssn field. your phone will be registered but you have two options: either you can pay a security deposit of $90 to $1000 ( since they can’t run a credit check without a ssn) or you can register for a pre-paid plan.

for those interested in the story, a friend of mine bought an iphone last week but when he went to activate it (he didn’t want to jailbreak/sim-free it), he ran into a problem: the registration process requires a social security number but because he is an international student, he doesn’t have one. i googled around for a while and all i could find was either alarmist articles on why you shouldn’t send your social security number over to at&t (remember at&t is the company that gave unchecked, back-door access to all your information to the nsa) or articles on why you shouldn’t buy an iphone at all if you don’t have a ssn.

what will apple they do with such sensitive information? will they protect it? do they really need to collect it? these are questions that privacy advocates are demanding answers for–and rightfully so. gone are the days where consumers should just provide such sensitive information because someone asks for it and cannot imagine why apple would need this information–it just doesn’t seem necessary.

anyway, i got on the phone with a customer support agent to resolve my problem. after putting me on hold for 15 minutes, she told me that i could enter the number 141-11-1111 (a number they internally use that let’s you bypass the ssn) in the social security number field and i would be ready to go. the only catch is that if you don’t enter your ssn, you either have to pay a security deposit between $90 and $1,000 or you can sign up for a pre-paid plan.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, at&t, social security number, ssn

scoble just put up his 10 rules of using twitter, which needless to say he breaks (since rules are meant to be…). here’s my take on the rules.

original photo: mayr

1. never send more than 140 characters: this is an obvious one and makes sense since you’re limited to 140 characters (pownce doesn’t have this limit).

2. never tweet more than 5 times a day: i think a more appropriate rule is to not tweet more than a couple of times in a row. otherwise you risk overexposure. you can tweet more than 5 times a day, just spread them out.

3. never follow more than 300 people: this will never be a problem for most people as long as they just follow their friends and people who they think have something useful to say. just don’t follow everyone who’s following you and you’ll be fine.

4. never follow anyone who isn’t your ‘real’ friend: it’s okay to follow people who aren’t your real friends if you are actually following them and engaging with them, just don’t break rule number 3.

5. don’t assume other people are having the same experience you are: that is the beauty of social media. we all get to define our own experience.

6. don’t post thoughts across multiple tweets: it’s called ‘micro-blogging’ (and twitter has enforced a 140-character limit) for a reason. if you have something longer to say, try tumblr or blogging.

7. the twitter question is ‘what are we doing?’: this doesn’t have to be enforced. you can post a blurb on what you are doing, what’s happening, what you think about what you are doing or what’s happening. just don’t break rule number 1 or 6.

8. follow one person for every 10 who follows you: this is a stupid rule. follow anyone you want as long as you are within the bounds of rule number 3.

9. if other people are telling you you’re spamming, you should listen to them: there is a mechanism for other people to block your spam. they can de-friend you and stop following you. problem solved.

10. don’t put things into twitter that aren’t designed for twitter: that’s what tumblr is for. figure out what you want to do with a platform and use the one most suited to your needs.

some people may abide by these rules but for the most of us there are no rules and if you don’t like it, click ‘un-follow’.

Technorati Tags: scoble, twitter, rules

whenever we get word of a new socially driven news site, the first thing that flashes through most people’s minds is ‘here we go again with another site that will be compared to, probably be called a clone of, and ultimately be overshadowed by digg‘. before we go ahead, let me just mention that mixx is in fact living on the edge and not in a good way.

the site offers all the usual read, submit, vote, comment, functionality but the main premise behind the it is to take the socially driven news model and personalize it for each user. you begin by choosing topics that you are interested in and organizing how you want them to be arranged on your home page and as you use the site these categories are populated to match your habits and interests. i know what you’re thinking, reddit and stumbleupon already do this and digg and propeller are scheduled to launch their own recommendation engines soon.

arrington argues that ‘entrepreneurs have been trying to crack the personalized news nut for years, with a string of failures,’ while pointing out an area mixx could capitalize on, but i think we’ve been well on our way towards personalization for a while. personalized content recommendation engines may not be perfect but a quick look at reddit shows that out of the top 25 stories recommended to me, i had already read 18 of them even before the made the front page. furthermore, the more i use stumbleupon, the more i enjoy using the site because my usage of the toolbar improves the relevancy of the content delivered to me.

the one feature that i think is well implemented on mixx (it’s not new and propeller has had it for over a year) is the local news section. if you add your location to your profile (unlike on digg, you don’t have to list a zip code) there will be an option to tag a story you’re submitting as local.

once you and other people from your area do that, you can retrieve local content by clicking the ‘local’ tab at the top of the page.

on the whole the site’s design and feature-set is not bad but it also doesn’t anything new to speak of.

Technorati Tags: social news, social media, digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon, mixx

hi, my name is muhammad saleem and i used to abuse internal linking. last november, a few months after i had started blogging, a regular reader and frequent commenter said the following to me,

as much as I enjoy reading your blog… you link back to yourself in your blog far more often than you link to outside sources.

another reader chimed in, saying,

most blogs link back to themselves more than outside links…it just makes sense. look at engadget for example… i don’t find a problem with it.

and at that time i didn’t find a problem with it either, but now i do. since then, i’ve realized certain benefits of linking out (beyond linking in or out just based on search engine algorithms and for seo purposes). by linking to other sources you can either use them to back up your own argument or provide your readers with another viewpoint to consider and come to their own conclusions. this helps your reputation as an author and makes you a more complete information source, giving your readers more of a reason to come back to you rather than someone else simply because you provide them with a more complete experience and most likely have richer conversations.

what’s surprising is that some of the most popular sites on the web right now are also the ones that most overuse/abuse internal linking. i took a few of the recent articles on techcrunch and mashable, and looked at their internal-to-outbound linking ratio and in many cases over 50% of the links were to their own previous coverage (even when they were regurgitating other people’s content). in fact, techcrunch doesn’t even link directly to the site they’re talking about anymore, rather they link to that site’s crunchbase profile.

Technorati Tags: links, internal linking, techcrunch, mashable, crunchbase

with all the online digital media news we’ve recently been reading, i was glad to get an email from the hey nielsen team offering me access to the site a week in advance. here’s a look at hey nielsen, nielsen media research’s foray into the social web. the site is divided into 5 main sections which we will take a look at one by one. (click images for larger versions)

opinions

the first and most important aspect of the site is the opinions section. here people can create opinions, react to and rate opinions created by other people, comment on them, share them, and report them to the site. opinions can be created in 5 cetegories - tv, movies, music, personalities, and internet, and they can be rated on a scale of -5 to 5.

clicking on any topic from there (i clicked on jericho) will take you to all the opinions created on that topic and that topic’s resulting ranking.

rankings

although you can click on any topic to see its ranking, there is an overall rankings section on the site that ranks all activity on the site. in the default view you can see the 20 highest ranked items on the site in all 5 categories.

clicking an item from here takes you to all opinions about that item and that item’s resulting ranking trend.

calendar

hey! nielsen is still in private beta so some of the site’s features are still unavailable. the entertainment calendar will probably integrate tv-guide like functionality into the site.

members

member search let’s you search for other site members name and geographical proximity. by clicking on a member you can see their opinion interaction history and either message them or add them as a recommender (i.e. their preferences are used to recommend things for you).

widgets and feeds

the other feature that is unavailable in the beta is widgets and feeds. from the looks of it the widgets are really well done and would be right at home at a lot of celebrity/entertainment news sites.

even though a couple of features are disabled right now, the site is highly usable and using it is an incredibly enjoyable experience. with hey! nielsen, nielsen media research has hit the social media nail on its head.

Technorati Tags: hey nielsen, nielsen media research, social media, entertainment, celebrity, news