HOME / Social Media
Social Media 101: never use a photo of yourself as your cover photo
You already have the profile photo for that. I know that you’re supposed to project yourself through you profile but try to find more ways to do this than one more photo of yourself. Plus, it’s bit disconcerting when I see multiple versions of you looking back at me through my screen. Thank you for [Continue reading]
These mails from Twitter sound kind of desperate
The bad (or good) thing about these kind of notifications is that it reminds me of a book on how social media (and other) apps/platforms use the science of behind creating #habits to trigger you into using the app/platform more Check out “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”
Reminder, you’re always giving information to Facebook
In case you were wondering how much information you’re providing to Facebook’s advertisers, there is a page for that. To access the page, you need to bump into an ad on your feed, click the arrow icon on the top right, select “Why am I seeing this?” and then “Manage your ad preferences”. Or click [Continue reading]
YouTube adds Contacts and Private Chat features
Every app/platform in today’s world should have every feature possible so since you already have contacts/friends/connections in Facebook/Twitter/Google+/etc, you might as well have them in YouTube as well. And since you have contacts, you need to have chat, otherwise, what’s the point? So in case there was some debate about whether YouTube was a social [Continue reading]
Adobe Post: Easily create social media/blog graphics on your iPhone
Adobe continues its release of free/freemium mobile apps. Adobe Post makes it easy for anyone to turn their photos and text into “beautifully designed graphics,” the company says, then share them on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. The app is easy to use, allowing you to select a single image from your [Continue reading]
Where has my desktop Google+ gone?
Some first-day gripes on the new #GooglePlus #UI. In short, it seems like the mobile UI has eaten up the desktop one. Here goes (also sending these over the @Google+ feedback form): Everything needs a click. No more hovering. While that make sense in mobile, I don’t see why the desktop experience must suffer. Hover [Continue reading]
Medium is a mess
Apparently, +Medium’s smart algorithms on what I should be reading next suggest that I should read my own posts. Seriously? In the screenshot, you can also witness the fresh Responses idiocy, which are supposed to be full-blown, long-text articles, but everybody (myself included) is using as an old-school comments form, disregarding the initial, actually-well-thought, feature [Continue reading]
One day, all Facebook posts will have views counters
(Update 22/Oct: Facebook now says this was a bug, no intention of actually showing views to regular people.) (Update 15/Oct: Aaaaaaand, it’s gone. No more views counts :) Let’s see how many years this takes to be fully implemented. If at all.) I’m not sure if I’m in a test group or something to that [Continue reading]
How to add authorship information for Facebook, Pinterest and Google on your blog
Authorship markup for sites used to be an exciting term back when Google was using it in the search results but has since faded back as Google decided that it’s not for everyone. Now it may make a come back as Facebook is now using it to help you get more followers and at the [Continue reading]
Shared circles murdered, Collections born: Upping the game for G+ curators
Crazy thought: maybe Google didn’t like (in the end) the ease of massively sharing hundreds of people’s profiles to thousands other people. Maybe that served the purpose of many people being happy to have thousands of followers (and thus be happy to be on Google+). Maybe they found out that it doesn’t improve overall post [Continue reading]
Seven years of Facebook in a single chart
I’m not sure I have seen any other service offer anything like that. In the screenshot you see what @SumAll has produced from my Facebook activity since the beginning of my registration, back in 2007, with numbers of posts, shares, comments per week. (I’m not sure what happened in 2012, I don’t remember not using [Continue reading]
Look! 8, a social network that wants to pay you money.
But this one seems a bit more serious. WSJ features 8 (weare8.com), a new social network launched in closed beta these days. 8 promises control and compensation over ad revenue to content creators. While we’ve heard this many times before (just google “social network that pays you“) and more recently a lot with Tsu, 8 [Continue reading]
Report from the reality distortion field
(As Apple announced it’s record quarterly net profit [7] of $18 billion this week, I’m re-posting/translating an article I wrote for the leading Greek newspaper Kathimerini [8], back in September 2014, after the Apple Watch announcement). This week saw the announcement of the new generation of iPhone models, as well as the most expected Apple [Continue reading]
A new way to share on Google+ from any page
Friends+Me has a new Google Chrome #extension, allowing you to share any page you are currently visiting. A popup like the one you would get on G+ appears and you can write your post, tag people and use the hashtag autocomplete feature as if you’re inside G+. You can also choose to start a new [Continue reading]
CoSchedule: a full social media solution for WordPress?
The question mark in the title is because this is actually my first test post using CoSchedule. It brands itself as the perfect way to manage your social media scheduling with WordPress as your base. The concept is that you have a calendar where you can visualise your scheduled blog posts and all social [Continue reading]
On algorithhms forming communities: my best photos of 2013 (according to 500px)
During this holidays break I setup a new site for my photography and new profiles in 500px and Flickr. 500px is set up in a manner that all new photos get some chance at being viewed a few times (Flickr’s Explore section has a threshold of some number of views). So while I was uploading [Continue reading]
How Do You Rate As an Influential Author?
A new tool is attempting to answer that: Virante AuthorRank. As Virante’s Mark Traphagen clarifies, Virante AuthorRank is not Google AuthorRank. It is an entirely indepedent formula based on various factors. The ratings it produces are: – AuthorRank: This is the author’s overall Virante AuthorRank score. It is a combination of all the factors we assess. Use this to [Continue reading]
Statistics, statistics, statistics!
One of the best G+ tools, CircleCount has an update on their dashboard page. You now can get an nice summary with the following – number of public posts you have written – number of plusones/reshares/comments you have received for these posts – the same numbers but as average numbers per posts – the number [Continue reading]
Quickly check the popularity of a Google+ post
If +1’s, comments and shares is not enough for your, here’s another metric to check for your posts. If you added a photo with your post, in the full view of the photo click the “Photo details” heading. It will show various information about the photo (dimensions, your camera, etc) and also the number of [Continue reading]
Who will see your Google+ posts?
A great flowchart by Philipp Steuer on which users will actually see your posts. h/t Tim Grimes
How to easily find and circle back your Google+ engagers
This post was inspired by Christine DeGraff who made a comment about manually adding (one by one!) all the people who shared a post of hers. There is an easier way! It’s all done with Google Chrome plugin called Circloscope, developed by Ehsan Ahmadi Gharacheh. You can test a free version, but if you want [Continue reading]
Facebook gets lazy, wants us to do it’s indexing for them
// Around the same time that Google+ is introducing features like automated tagging of posts and your photos can being searchable by their content, Facebook wants us to go a through a menu interface and state what we’re doing from a choice of options. Of course this all comes down to advertising (as Slate pointed [Continue reading]
How to fix the new G+ layout with Stylish
// Well, “fix” is a relative term. You might like the new look and feel of Google+ so you can stop reading now. But while I’ve initially loved it, I have been mounting up some serious problems with it. So much, that while I’m not a big fan of the various solutions to customise the [Continue reading]
Social media cross-posting with Friends+me
// I’ve recently posted about Fotostat (http://bit.ly/g-fotostat ) , a new service for cross-posting within several social networks, with focus on images. I have been using it with great success for a site I manage. But if your main network is Google+, you are out of luck, because Google has only given write access through the G+ API to selected third-party [Continue reading]
Blogger and the Holy Grail of unified comments
// So yesterday Google announced a further integration of Google+ comments and Blogger. If you enable the related setting, if your Blogger post is shared on G+, any comment on the G+ post with your post will also be shown in the page of the Blogger post in the comments section. This is a Holy [Continue reading]
Full size photo uploads: G+ winning the tech war on Facebook
// In the latest #googleplusupdate, you can now upload the full-sized photos and G+ will serve them accordingly: Initially you get a reduced (but great quality) version but you can zoon and pan to see more detail! How to have this: To enable full-size desktop uploads, just visit your settings at https://www.google.com/settings/plus, and check "Upload [Continue reading]
Social media cross-posting with Fotostat
// I’ve been expanding the number of social networks I use, almost like an addict lately :) So I’ve been looking for a way to administer my addiction in an easier way. I had an automation between G+, Twitter and my WordPress blog (so I was only posting on G+) and additionally was cross-posting to [Continue reading]
Draft: cloud text-editing for any anything anywhere
// I’ve written about #Draft already a few days ago http://bit.ly/g-draft when it was “just” a web-based text #editor for #Dropboxand Google Drive with version control and collaboration features.But I need to write again as a #Chrome extension was released that redefined how you can use Draft. I’ll just copy the developer’s (+Nathan Kontny) description: [Continue reading]
Twitter Cards: Engage!
// Just 6 days after my submission for inclusion on the #TwitterCards program, I got in and in the screenshot you can see the result: whenever someone tweets a URL of my blog, an “expanded view” will be available with a title, short description, thumbnail, my name and #Twitter handleIt also works on the mobile (iOS [Continue reading]
Improve links to your site on Twitter with Twitter Cards
// Announced since last July, Twitter Cards is Twitter’s equivalent (or “answer” if you like tech drama) to the Open Graph. By defining a set of #meta #tags in your #HTML code you can provide instructions to #Twitterin order to display an “expanded” preview of your page, when your page’s URL is included in a [Continue reading]