Tagged: friends

August 5th, 2009

This Twitter Business…It’s Shady

I’m feeling a bit shady this morning for an idea I have in managing my Twitter accounts. Yes, that’s plural. At last count, I have 11 Twitter accounts that I am responsible for. Four for work. Two for the cats. Three that are “mine.” One for the business. And one for SGFblogs.com. Don’t judge me.

The accounts in question this morning are my* accounts: sarahjoaustin, tweeples_guide, and bloggers_guide. First, let me explain why I have these three personal accounts. I started with sarahjoaustin, which was fine until January when Twitter hit the social media radar and everyone and their mother (including mine) joined Twitter. I follow a lot of people I know personally, and I’m pretty liberal in following anyone in my geographic area. Until Twitter’s new popularity sprung up, I tweeted at my whim about whatever I liked, including blogging and Twitter and other social media news.  Over time, I was friends with more “real-life” friends than before and a lot of those people aren’t keen on getting an article about blogging or Twitter or social media news every other minute.

So I first created bloggers_guide, and a month later I created tweeples_guide. Both were created to I could share the helpful and interesting blogging and Twitter and social media news as I liked. I have been pretty diligent in finding such resources for the last six months.

But I took a break from blogging in July, and I declared Google Reader bankruptcy, deleting all** of the feeds I was subscribed to. Like many people, I don’t use a lot of discretion when choosing what to add to gReader, and eventually, there is just too much to read. My theory is this: After deleting all these feeds, the blogs I remember liking and reading regularly are the blogs I can resubscribe to because they obviously left an impression with me. I added anew those blogs this morning. Most of those are personal blogs that I read for myself, but I switched up what I did for my Twitter and blogging resources.

Instead of subscribing to them via RSS, I tracked down the blog/author on Twitter and began following them with either bloggers_guide or tweeples_guide, hoping they’ll a) tweet links to their recent posts and b) provide links to other resources, too. Essentially, these accounts are resources for me because of who I follow and resources for others because of what I tweet.

So here is my question: Am I complete scum if I unfollow those friends who are not resources to me on these accounts? Here are the pros and cons I came up with:

Pros

  • A concentrated stream of blogger- or Twitter-related information for me.
  • A list of Twitter- or blogger-specific resources for my followers (the Followers list).
  • A less cluttered RSS reader.

Cons

  • Getting the same tweets across multiple accounts.
  • Hurting/breaking some “relationships” on my side accounts. (But I don’t dialog with those accounts much anyway.)

This is my quandry today. Any insight to my problem?

* I say “my” accounts because while I maintain administrative rights to them, I’ve also given Linden exclusive permission to tweet for tweeples_guide and bloggers_guide as she fancies.

** All RSS feeds except the ones from websites I administrate.

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Posted in tweeples guide | 4 Comments »

May 12th, 2009

Facebook Sans Facebook.com: How I’ve Automated My Facebook Use

I attended a social media think tank meeting yesterday, and while we were introducing ourselves and explaining what we do for our livings and how we use social media, something occurred to me: I rarely go to Facebook.com any more. I chalk some of this up to Facebook’s new format, which I don’t whole-heartedly find easy to use, but I rarely login to Facebook because I have automated all of my Facebook tasks to make me look like I’m online and to send Facebook functions to me. I thought I might share these automated functions with you today to a) educate you and b) find out if there’s anyone else like me out there.

Status Updates via TweetDeck

First off, the Status Update. For a long time, I sent everything I posted to Twitter to my Facebook status. Yes, there’s an app for that. Turns out, my Facebook friends are not the same audience as my Twitter friends, so I turned off that function because I was annoying them and myself. But I was still too lazy to login to Facebook to make status updates. Then TweetDeck released a new version of itself, which included Facebook status functionality and allowed me to send tweets to Twitter, Facebook, or both.

At the same time, TweetDeck will also collect the Facebook status updates from my friends and put them in their own TweetDeck column. Now I have a running feed of what my friends are saying on Facebook. I am so lazy.

Notes via RSS Feed

Some people choose to use their Facebook Notes like a blog, and aside for feeling sorry for them for not having real blogs, I don’t have a ton of time to read through all their memes about high school and their kids. But I still feel compelled to do something with those notes. After all, something might be interesting once in a blue moon. Facebook creates an RSS feed of my friends’ notes, so I read those notes in Google Reader. While Facebook’s RSS generator does a lousy job of maintaining any semblance of formatting Notes allows, I get an general idea of what’s going on in the note, and if I need formatting, I can go back to Facebook for it.

Essential Email Notifications

Some notifications on Facebook are essential to know about pronto. I’m thinking Message notifications and Wall postings primarily, but I also want to know if I’ve been tagged in a note, photo, or video or if someone has commented on anything of mine. Facebook emails me every time something of this sort happens on my profile, and those emails go in a tidy little folder in Gmail, so they don’t clutter up my inbox. The important thing is that these notifications are sent to me; I don’t have to fetch them by logging in. If they require action, I can login at my leisure.

I find some notifications that Facebook offers pesky and choose not to receive notification of them because the information they provide does not warrant immediate action. For example, being invited to a group. That can wait. Being invited to an event. I’m antisocial and not in college, so that can wait. Being added as someone’s friend. That can wait. (Because if we’re not already friends on Facebook, well, you get the picture…)

My Self-Declared Best Practices

I follow a few self-declared best practices to keep my Facebook time to a minimum. For one, I rarely add applications. The ones I do add usually have some function that allows me to do something in Facebook automatically. The others are silly and a waste of time, and I block them. I also rarely chat on Facebook. I rarely chat period. I actually am not a fan of chatting unless you’re a really close friend. And when I can, I try to move Message conversations into email. (Seriously, I really hate the Message function in Facebook. Let’s face it, those are essentially emails, and emails belong in my Gmail Inbox. Period.)

My One Facebook Vice

Now, the one thing I have no qualms about logging in to Facebook for is posting photos. I have no problem logging in to post my photos on Facebook. I do have a problem logging in to look at photos on Facebook because I can waste so much time looking at pictures. And then when I don’t look at them, I miss some good ones, and that sucks. Unfortunately, there is no good way to be notified of those automatically.

I hope you understand that I’m not anti-Facebook. I’m just a firm believer that information should come to me and that I shouldn’t have to check Facebook every other second to see if someone did something new. Maybe I’m a little bit lazy, but that’s fine with me, darn it.

So am I wrong? Is there something inherently awesome in Facebook that I must be logged in 24/7? Or are you just like me, logging in only for the bare Facebook essentials? Tell me!

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Posted in brilliantly creative | 1 Comment »

April 7th, 2009

11 Places to Find Twitter Friends

Nothing is sadder than a new Twitter account that doesn’t have any friends, and today I’m going to help you remedy your wallflower ways. This is weird, but on Twitter, it takes friends to make friends. Sort of like middle school. Anyway, here are 11 places you can find existing friends and make new ones on Twitter.

Twitter.com

Twitter actually has a pretty decent people finder, which can be accessed by clicking ‘Find People’ from your Twitter.com home page. On it there are four ways to find people:

  1. Find on Twitter. Search for people by user name or by real name. Particularly useful if you have someone in mind or already know their user name.
  2. Find on other networks. Search for people by syncing Twitter accounts with email addresses in your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, or MSN accounts. A good use of your contacts lists stored in these accounts. Actually, I think it would be cool if you sync Twitter with your Facebook friends, but that will probably never happen.
  3. Invite by email. If you can’t find friends, invite new friends to join. Especially useful if you’re the only one in your town who is on Twitter. Hard to imagine, I know, but when my mom joined, she was merely the third person in my hometown tweeting.
  4. Suggested users. Follow these popular Twitter users as recommended by Twitter. Getting on this list is like winning homecoming queen in high school. Unless you’re really pretty and really popular, it won’t happen. But some of these people are worth following.

Twitter Search

Twitter Search also allows you to search by some pretty strict parameters, and this is useful if you’re looking for other tweeple who are in your geographical area or are interested in the same things you are.

  1. Search by region. Enter a destination and select your search radius. I search by region when looking for new tweeple in the Springfield, Missouri area, so I can add them as @tweeples_guide friends.
  2. Search by keyword. Direct Twitter to search by exact words or phrases, tell Twitter to search for any words you provide, or exclude the words you’re not looking for. I find this useful when I’m looking for other bloggers. I search for any key blogging words that bloggers often use in their tweets (i.e. blogger, wordpress, post, etc.).
  3. Search by hashtag. Similar to the keyword search, but specifically searches for words with the # in front of them. (Vocab lesson of the day: the pound sign also goes by the name octothorpe.) In Springfield, we use the #SGF hashtag to identify which Springfield we’re talking about. SGF are our airport initials.

Other Places

While I often use the sources listed above because they are quick and easy, the sources below tend to turn up better quality tweeple even though they’re not as speedy.

  1. Blogs. I read a lot of blogs. So many. And if I like a blogger well enough, more than likely, they are going to be a fun person to follow on Twitter. If the blogger knows what they’re doing, they’ll have a link to their Twitter profiles on their blog’s home page.
  2. Twitter profiles. While it’s totally inappropriate to go to someone else’s profile (especially someone you don’t know personally) and start following all of their friends, the Twitter profiles of your close friends are great resources to find other people you might like to get to know.
  3. Mentions (formerly @replies). In my circle of tweeple, we tend to mention one another in our conversations quite a bit. If they start mentioning someone I’m not following and engaging them in conversation, chances are that I know them and will get a kick out of following them, too.
  4. WeFollow.com. This “user-powered Twitter directory” allows tweeple to tag their Twitter accounts with keywords and lumps like-minded tweeple according to those keywords.

Now that I’ve provided 11 places for you to find Twitter friends, there is no excuse for not joining the party. And while you’re in the twitterverse, if you find new places where new friends are plentiful, leave ‘em in the comments!

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Posted in tweeples guide | 6 Comments »

August 28th, 2008

Four Post-Run Activities You Shouldn’t Do (And Four You Should)

So it’s Take It and Run Thursday over at Runner’s Lounge, and the title of this week’s writing assignment is “Run. Rest and Recover. Repeat.” I’m supposed to be sharing my secrets for recovery after long runs or hard races, but instead I’m going to share four you shouldn’t do. Let’s take a look:

  1. Don’t walk across hot coals. I don’t care if you do have a runner’s high. Your feet have already taken a beating; don’t torture them any more. Even if you’re caught in the wind of self-realization, understand that you are not Pam from The Office.
  2. Don’t go bull riding. My brother is an aspiring bull rider, and let me tell you, if you’re going to ride bulls, you must be able to move quickly. YOU’RE A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER! And after a long run, slow is the only speed you have, which will not bode well for your back end when the bull head butts you across the arena.
  3. Don’t try to outrun a serial killer. Only outrun serial killers for speed workouts. Granted, serial killers are notably out-of-shape middle-aged men, and I’m sure you give them a run for their money (pun intended), but it’s just not a good idea.
  4. Don’t drink your body weight. I’ve heard that a cold beer after a hot run is wonderful, but let’s not get carried away. Yes, you need to hydrate, and one or two drinks is perfectly fine, but the last thing you want the morning after a long run is a hangover and stiff quads.

I understand that I just ruined your agenda for Labor Day weekend, but let me remedy that with some recovery activities that I do recommend:

  1. Take a nap. In bed, on the couch, it doesn’t matter. Sleep is a way of telling your body, “Thanks for working so hard today. I love you.”
  2. Eat pizza. I’ll be the first to admit that pizza is one of my favorite carb-loading foods, but it also makes a great recovery meal. I personally think that a thin-crust pizza with Canadian bacon, pineapple, onion, and red pepper is the best recovery meal for my body.
  3. Ice everything that hurts. I have tendonitis in my left knee, and while it doesn’t flare up a lot, I like to baby it after hard runs with a little Aleve and some ice. I just prop that baby up on the ottoman and veg out.
  4. Watch a DVD or movie that you know by heart. This activity works best with #1 and #3. Because you know whatever you’re watching so well, you won’t feel guilty for falling asleep while watching it, yet you love it so much that it’ll keep you on the couch while you ice. I’m a big fan of Friends, The Office, and romance comedies after long runs.

That’s all I’ve got, but I’m looking for more ways to recover after my long runs because I might be running a marathon this fall, and I’ll need all the help I can get! Yikes!

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Posted in fitness/health | 7 Comments »

July 20th, 2008

Sad, Sorry Little Sarah

I have a case of nobody-likes-me-guess-I’ll-eat-some-worms tonight. It’s not true. Plenty of people like me, but I’m feeling particularly best friendless right now. It sucks.

I’ve made some efforts to meet new people in the last month or so: at the gym, at church, at a book club. But making friends is so hard. Everyone has a family or a job or a million other people vying for their friendship, but no one has time. I could argue that I don’t have time for friends either, but if the right gal(s) came along, I would drop everything to be her friend.

It’s no secret that making friends is hard for me. I don’t give the best first impression, I hate small talk, and I’m brutally honest (and sometimes lack a filter). I’m just not a sorority girl who has 1,000 friends on Facebook and who’s in a wedding every other weekend. Hell, I’ve never even been a bridesmaid, and I only had two in my own wedding.

Can I help that it takes months for me to warm up to someone new? When I try to do it sooner, I can’t help but feel like I’m trying to hard or that I’m being fake. Speeding through the process just doesn’t do it for me; if you want to be my friend, it’s gonna take a lot of time and a lot of sweat, but I promise that I’ll be your friend for life. I’m fiercely loyal, and I don’t let my real friends get away easily. Take a chance on me!

Sorry for being a downer tonight. Just needed to get it out.

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Posted in personal | 8 Comments »

September 13th, 2007

Why I’m Mad at the Germans

Chris and I went to the Moxie again tonight on an impromptu date. Our week has been so incredibly stressful, and we’ve hardly seen one another, so a date was overdue. We watched “My Best Friend,” a French comedy about an art dealer who realizes he has no friends, bets his business partner that he can produce his best friend in exchange for a Grecian vase, and learns how to be a friend from a taxi driver. An excellent film. I highly recommend it!

On the way home, Chris and I started joking about the “three S’s” of being a friend: sociable, smiling, and sincere. And then we started talking about friends, specifically Linden, and how she’ll be hard to replace when she moves to Germany in 14 days. You see, I’m fiercely loyal to my friends, but making friends doesn’t come easy for me. It takes me about six months of keeping an eye on people “I should get to know” before I allow myself to open up and let the friendship really blossom.

With Linden, we hit it off pretty quickly. She registered Chris and I for our wedding at Bed Bath & Beyond, we shared an office in the English Department, we started running together, we had fun talks on our runs (I knew she was a keeper when she didn’t judge me for my zit-popping point system), and we had a web development class together (I didn’t realize until then just how nerdy we were—and it compounded when we were together).

I’m really sad that she’s leaving. By the time Chris and I got home tonight, I was crying because I knew that she’d be impossible to replace. It’s not just about the running, though I’m a little afraid I won’t finish my training with as much gusto as I would with her running with me. I’m afraid I won’t find another running buddy that’s half as great as she is.

But we’re friends off the trail, too. Who else loves Google as much as I do? Who else let’s me ramble on about this blog and my ideas for it as much as she does? Who else gets half as excited about Harry Potter-themed movie nights as me? Who else can appreciate the idiosyncrasies of my cat as she does?

Linden sent me this Marcel Proust quote a while back: “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” I am so grateful for Linden and her never-ending friendship. She has truly made my soul bloom over the last two years, and I’ll never forget that. Even though I have to give her up State-side, I know that she will bless everyone she meets in Germany, and I trust that she’ll garden many souls there.

P.S. I feel like that last paragraph was sweet and profound, so I’ll ruin it with this: Stupid Germans! You ruin everything!

P.S.2. Linden, I don’t think Rob is stupid and I don’t know that he’s ever ruined anything.

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Posted in personal | No Comments »

 

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