How I use Facebook

There are quite a few different types of users on Facebook. My wife and kids use Facebook predominantly to message and email physical friends and family. My sons seem to have found some video games as well.

Many of my real estate friends, mainly people I've met from Active Rain, have joined groups for their geographic communities and for real estate professionals. I've noted in this niche that face to face meetings between formerly online only friends is huge right now. Meetups and Tweetups and the sort are all important.

For me personally Facebook has three key priorities:

1. To maintain an active presence for my three key social niches - real estate, politics, northwest indiana
2. I let twitter posts roll into my status updates automatically - thus a lot of status changes to my profile every day - and these have tended to create some active debates in news-feeds amoung friends. Early on these debates were entirely political friends, but recently real estate and northwest Indiana friends have joined the debates too.
3. Business Development - our consulting practice offers business development consulting to a couple small businesses. I use Facebook to professionally reach out to potential new businesses, I find linkedin still doesn't have the attention of professionals.
   

How do you use Facebook? Here are some of Chris Brogan's thoughts on Facebook today, and the reason I wrote this post today.

The state of RSS utilization

The title is probably too ominous, and the commenting debate on this issue posed on Micro Persuasion was better than even the post itself. First the post:

Author Steve Rubel quotes a Forrester survey showing that only 11% of internet users make use of RSS technology. Men have a higher propensity to use, useage jumped from 2% to 11% over last couple years. (See graphs and futher analysis) RSS Adoption at 11%

Ok, now the comments, both in friendfeed and on Steve's site get even more interesting. I'll only grab two for examples sake:

Steve,

I have to disagree with the report. We track millions of RSS users who consume billions of content items monthly. Our unique users are growing nearly 10% month over month. Most people who are receiving content have no clue it is powered by RSS just as they don't know they use HTML every day.

RSS usage is still growing. For another perspective, check out this report: www.universalmccann.com/Assets/wave_3_20080403093750.pdf. It claims RSS usage grow 153% - faster growth than Video and Social Networking.

Furthermore, you might be surprised to know that for some premium online publishers their RSS feed traffic outstrips their website traffic. We are seeing this trend growing.

Don't give up on RSS just yet!

Cheers,
Bill Flitter
Pheedo, Inc

As a great writer, Steve has opened up the conversation and then let the debate rage on. Some commenters suggesting that RSS is being adopted without user knowledge. Some saying that RSS is still too difficult for normal Joe, and that it needs to be a one button action like following someone on FB.

I strongly disagree with this "analysis". Why not poll Web browsing penetration in 1997 and say it has peaked? Silliness. - Louis Gray (From FriendFeed, totally separate commenting feed on this post and topic)

Because the writer has a solid following on Friendfeed and twitter, the conversations are able to move outward like ripples into multiple social mediums. I didn't take the time to track the conversation on twitter, that's a bit more complicated, but I bet it was hot and fast!


Two conclusions:

1. You should be using RSS on your website, your blog and any other online medium
2. Your listening posts, the ones you use to keep track of people talking about you or your ideas, now has to be very finely tuned to stay in the conversation.
   

Is your google profile updated?

Time to head into google land and update your profile and setting for your shared reader items. Traffic on these pages is up ... and rumor has it that they are being crawled now by spiders for page rank. Here's my shared items page and profile recently updated.

clipped from Daltonsbriefs Shared Items Daltonsbriefs' shared items clipped from www.google.com Porter County Politics Daltons Briefs Northwest Indiana Real Estate NW Indiana Commercial Real Estate NW Indiana Mortgages Hoosiers for John McCain Blogger (Blogspot) - graphegroup Blogger (Blogspot) - kosovodaltonsbriefs Blogger (Blogspot) - nwiblogs Blogger (Blogspot) - synergyblueprint Home builder, real estate developer, and investor. I write and blog about real estate, Northwest Indiana, politics, and international affairs.

Just who are Obama's Friends?

Remember FOB? Friends of Bill Clinton ... well this site answers the question: Who are Obama's friends?

clipped from www.barackbook.com Barack Obama, Rashid Khalidi, Valerie Jarrett, ACORN and William Ayers are now friends with The Woods Fund of Chicago Learn more about Barack Obama and Joe biden by visiting www.MeetBarackObama.com and www.NotYourAverageJoseph.com

Promote others for success

I found this article while reviewing Chris Brogan's shared items on google reader, a regular read. It looks like Chris and Louis Gray have a mutual admiration society going, that will benefit both of them. Are you promoting others?

clipped from www.louisgray.com Making Your Blogging Much More than Just "You" On Sunday, Chris Brogan asked an important question: "How Often Do You Promote Others?", asking how often many of us are highlighting lesser-known people, sharing their items, or promoting their work, to expand awareness. One of the people Chris gave credit to was Robert Scoble, who Chris said "points me to new stuff all the time". It's no secret a lot of my own online activity is the result of having watched watching Scoble's efforts. It was his pushing toward Google Reader, creating a link blog, and linking out to people big and small that has guided some of my own behavior. So, as I mentioned on Chris' stream in FriendFeed, here's what I'm trying to do clipped from www.louisgray.com louisgray.com Silicon Valley Blog for early adopters, technology geeks, RSS addicts and Mac freaks. (May also occasionally contain some TiVo, media, sports and politics...)

Democrats say "disregard the fraud" of ACORN

It may be too late, everyday voters are pretty frustrated that Democrats for Obama have pursued fraudulent registrations. Polls get closer today, as many voters are getting sick of hearing about unions and Democrats in collusion.

clipped from www.indystar.com Democrats brush off vote fraud claims State Democratic officials said today that the growing fervor over allegations of voter fraud and remote polling sites in Lake County is a smoke screen aimed at shoring up Republican John McCain's chances to win Indiana. In Lake County, an attorney for labor unions and Democrats wants a new judge to decide to decide whether satellite early voting centers can stay open in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.

100 Social Network to join today

Sounds crazy, but join all 100, set up a profile using your SEO targeted username, and watch your google rankings jump. Plus you may just find some new online community support on one of these great networks.

Took me 6 hours to join all the ones I hadn't joined yet

clipped from www.netamorfasis.com clipped from www.netamorfasis.com Top 100 Social networks every Realtor should have a profile on

Do the numbers - your followers - matter?

Chris Brogan deserves a little pride in having amassed a following of readers, he's giving daily advice and ideas that are useful. Well done.

clipped from www.chrisbrogan.com Blogging is Not a Numbers Game- Or Is It Today marks a milestone in my RSS subscribers. I just crossed 10,000 people reading me I mentioned crossing into the Technorati Top 100 last week (or the week before; I’m losing track of days). That’s another one of those milestones that I was pleased by, but also mostly silently counting. A year ago, at the first Blog World Expo, I went to the Technorati booth, where they were handing out stickers for your blog rank. I was 3,274. So, it took me a full year of blogging my head off and getting mentions from other bloggers (that’s how Technorati decides rank) to move up.

Mashups of election information

Terrific sources of information as elections become more transparent and major media loses its grip on info control

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com 5 Ways To Visualize The U.S. Elections 1) Visualize Political Contributions By Industry 2) Visualizing Earmarks 3) Visualizing Election Polls 4) Electoral College Prediction Tracker 5) The 2008 Presidential Election In The Blogosphere

Sarah Palin contributes more than Biden to charity

Once again we see the hypocrisy in liberalism, so I guess only government money can fix problems in society

clipped from gregmankiw.blogspot.com Charity and the Would-be Veeps Mark Perry reports: Even though the Palins ($294,000) earned only about half the income of the Bidens ($569,000) in 2006 and 2007 combined, the Palins gave almost 6 times as much to charity ($8,205) in those two years as the Bidens ($1,375).

Porter County meets national Red County site

Some self promotion, our site Porter County Indiana Politics reached some eyeballs, and I was asked to start posting on Red County Blogs.

clipped from www.redcounty.com My Man Mitch holds 16 point lead I have been asking recently: "Will Mitch Daniels' popularity, and the regained traction of Senator John McCain for President have down ticket effects on House or Senate races?"   Thoughts? Where do you project our Congressional Delegation to end up?  State house and senate?