The Role of Social Media in The Brussels Train Crash and other Tragedies
I’ve read about the earthquakes, 
the tsunamis and the other disasters and how social networks have been used to keep families and other informed about what is going on. Still, because I have been lucky enough to never know anyone in any of these catastrophes I never really understand how big of a difference they make. Until today…
This morning there was a train crash in Brussels, or actually outside of Brussels (But the initial reports in Sweden did not say so). The current numbers say that 18 people died and over 50 were injured. Because of this my phone started beeping with messages and calls from worried friends and family members who wanted to check if I was okay.
Therefore I put it in my Facebook status that everything was alright and that I was not in the crash. This was very appreciated by others who were concerned. My friends here in Brussels also did the same which gave me less to worry about.
With cell phones many might not find this necessary, but if someone of my Swedish friends did not have my Belgian number, because we mostly speak on Skype they did not have to worry, neither did those who had run out of credit on their phone and could not send me a text. For these and many other reasons the Facebook status update became invaluable.
Thus, now I really understand the importance of using social media to update my family that I’m ok!
But social media helped in other ways too, on Twitter people who were at spot of the accident uploaded pictures that people could follow to see what was going on. Most information was easily available on the hashtags #brussels and #traincrash.
How To: Use Long Urls to aviod Twitter Scams
Lately, Twitter scams have become a big problem. Twitter scams are for example tweets containing links to sites that have viruses etc. Not only have normal internet users been fooled by these scams but also some of the pro-users have become victims.
This issue has developed along with the increased use of URL shortening services, such as bit.ly and tr.im
A while ago Bit.ly announced that they are making an effort to prevent this, since they are the default link shortening service for twitter.
To you avoid clicking on shorted links or checked, I recommend that you use a web browser add-on/extension that automatically shows the “real” link instead of the shorter version. This way you see the correct Url for the site that the link is taking you to, and it is easier to determine whether it is a site that you trust or not.
For those of you, who just occasionally click on shortened links, I recommend that you check the links at websites who lengthen links, such as LongUrl.com.
Here follow a list of plug-in for Firefox and Chrome, that will help you avoid the scams by using Long Urls:
Chrome
ChromeMUSE – Shorten and expand URLs with different shortening service providers.
Explode – Expand shortened URLs (e.g. TinyURL) with LongURL
Bit.ly – (shorten, share, and track your links (only bit.ly))
Firefox
LongURL Mobile Expander 2.0.0
Long URL Please 0.4.1 (Article about this addon)
Internet Explorer
Since I do not use IE, I have not tried any IE extension that solves this problem. Unfortunately search did not help me either, so my tips to those of you who use internet explorer are to use one of the universal services that does the same thing.
Check your URLs no matter what browser you use
In case you do not want to use any of these plug-ins you could always use LongUrl.com which is a universal way to show were the short links are taking you. It will take more time to check the links this was as you have to enter the website. But that might be time you’re willing to offer as you do not want the links to be leading you to the wrong place.
General Online Safety
Internet gives us a lot of opportunities and makes things easier, you can save both time and money with the internet. But as it develops faster than many out there has time to follow, I encourage you to stay updated on the news threats that emerge for you as internet develops, and hope that you encourage your friends and families to do the same.
A closer look on the synchronization of LinkedIn & Twitter
The benefits of the cooperation
Two days ago, LinkedIn and Twitter announced their new cooperation; LinkedIn and Twitter go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Surely, I can see a lot of potential with this new cooperation. First, you remove the double work with posting the same information in both places. Second, while LinkedIn might be a more obvious place to announce work opportunities etc, the connection to twitter will send the request to more people.
The main thing about the cooperation I think lies in the party’s individual benefit from it. LinkedIn will most likely become more active from this cooperation and get significant increase in status updates. Twitter might get both more users from LinkedIn by people who just create an account to connect the two, since it now will not take any extra time to produce tweets. Since people tweet about all sort of things, Twitter might also increase the amount of tweets regarding business and professions. I cannot stop than wondering if an increased amount of tweets on these subjects would somehow be good for their financial growth.
The features of the synchronization
Anyway, even though there are benefits for both twitter and LinkedIn users. As well as for the two companies, still worry about what disadvantages that comes from this cooperation. Look at this for example:
As you can see, you can chose to share only some tweets or to share all of them. Setting that are made from the LinkedIn website but affects your status updates coming from twitter. While LinkedIn you have to check the square by the twitter logo to get your updates forwarded to Twitter.
It would be one thing if they only had the option to choose to connect the status updates on both networks for each post, like you can if you only share tweets with #in. However, as you can choice to have all tweets published on both networks I am worried that the increase number of updates on LinkedIn may be too much. People might become “spammed” on LinkedIn by others frequent twitter updates.
Changing the identity of the networks
From my point of view, the constant flow of twitter is what I expect from the network. The tweets I follow contain anything from links, to questions, to actions and of course answers of the questions “what are you doing right now?.” On LinkedIn, I do not expect this constant flow of updates, I expect people to update their statuses once or twice daily often less than that. The updates are more thought trough and gets to stay there status for a while. I have many contacts that overlap these networks and therefore expect my contact to use them differently. Thus depending on what I want to know about my contacts I chose which network to look up them on.
These identifying functions of networks it one of the reasons why I am on both of them, I have different expectations from them, and look for different things on them. If LinkedIn starts to become too much like twitter, why should I be on both networks?
Individual selection of the features
When people began synchronizing their twitter updates with their Facebook updates I found their updates to be more generic than the updates that they actually posted on Facebook. Thus, they changed the expectation of the Facebook update. Therefore, the possibility to hide particular updates solved this issue. Since, you no longer had to receive the synchronized posts, even though you might miss other updates then. A similar solution on LinkedIn would be very useful.
All in all, If LinkedIn gives us a possibility to hide the synchronized updates, I so far have nothing critical to say about the cooperation.
What do you think? Do you see more advantages? Or perhaps you have already seen threats? How has the cooperation affected you so far?
How To: Tweet to make an impression and make sure that people recieve it
Ok, so honestly this post was supposed to be about why we tweet but instead it turned into a lesson in making your tweets the most desirable to read.
Jason Pullock asked his followers this question today and I responding saying “To share some of the interesting stuff that I find and to get access information and knowledge that other share with me, you?”Which is true, but how much do we really read other stuff?
I have been going true the stats for the links that I have been sharing over the last couple of days. The results varied a bit depending on the subject and how the tweets was written, but I had only between 3-34 click per link, which is very low considering that I have over 1,800 followers. So why is that?
Well first of all we have to consider that not everyone checks their twitter every day, and most of us see far from all the twitters that the people we follow put up each day. This means that only a small portion of the people following me actually saw the tweets when they came up. Still the number is very small.
If others use twitter in the same way as me, this is how they go about it. You log onto twitter and begin by checking the wall and what people are saying. While scanning trough the current tweets you choose one maybe two tweets with links that you want to follow and click on them. Anything else that might be on that wall you forget instantly and go on to checking replies, DMs and send a tweet yourself.
Knowing this, how do you write tweets that matter? That other people will actually read? There is not only one way, but now when you know what you are trying to do, here are a few tips.
- Tweets with links to lists are always popular “ten ways to..” etc.
- If you are referring to a blog or article with a title that is boring or does not describe the post well, don´t use it in your tweet, come up with something yourself instead.
- Somewhere in the tweet tell people what you are linking to [video] etc.
- Do not only post title and link <- add why they should read it or why you read it!
There are other a lot of other tips on how you increase your followers and stuff, but I didn´t want to share that, instead I hope that you think more about how you can impact your current followers.
That is why I tweet: to make an impression by sharing stuff that can affect people or teach people something and I read tweets in hope to get the same in return.
Remember – Quality before quantity!
What do you think? Any Tips that you want to add to the list?
Most bloggers agree that is more fun to write when you get comments and reactions to
what they have to say. Because of this, there are lots of different reaction possibilities on most blogs such as; thumbs up, share on Facebook or Twitter, give points to the post or write a regular comment.
While comments themselves are interesting and encouraging, discussions in the comments section between several people are even better. But it is worth remembering that most people today are living with a tight schedule, therefore one particular feature on you blog, might make things easier for them to get into such discussions. Namely, a feed that send you the comments on the blog post via RSS, or even better, the opportunity to receive the feed via email.
Some comments applications, such as disqus gives everyone the opportunity to subscribe to the blog comments for a particular blog via email or rss, whether they are users or not. Those who are in fact users of Disqus can also choose to automatically subscribe to comments from the posts that they comment on.
So whether you have your own domain or use wordpress or blogspot, etc. Make sure to find a application that allows for this functionality. If you have trouble finding one for your blog, you can always send a question here, and hopefully I can help you find one.