Tag: MySpace

Introduction

Some of you may have dabbled in Facebook or other social networks but then find that you are “sick and tired” of operating them. Then what you end up doing is ceasing to log in to your account. Your friends or followers hear nothing from you and you don’t follow up on activity from the people who are or could be in the social network.

You may even tie your account to an email account that you subsequently cease to use like one associated with your previous ISP or employer; or a Webmail account that you have forgotten about.

These accounts end up with a “pile-up” of friend requests and other people using the social network end up thinking you’re not there. The potential friends may even be considered “spammy” by the social network as they end up with many pending friend requests.

But some of you may want to keep the account alive for such efforts as “keeping in the loop” while travelling or keeping in contact with distant family and friends.

There are some people who may think that it is an act of sacrilege to engage with Facebook, MySpace or Twitter when they have broken off from the network as a statement of their beliefs or actions. The people who I am targeting this post at are the ones who simply abandon these accounts after a fair bit of seasonal activity.

Leave an off-the-air post

When you think that you will be going “off the air” with the social network, write up a public post that says that you will be scaling back your presence on the social network. This lets everyone know that you are OK but won’t be appearing as regularly as you would have done.

Set up notifications

A good practice is to make use of the notification function that the social network has. Here, you could set up your social network’s notification function to send you a summary email post of notifications concerning your account;s activity.

In this arrangement, you should know if someone sends you a direct message, adds you as a friend or follower or confirms a friend request that you instigated. If the social network supports a suggestion framework, you could be notified if someone suggests a member or page for you to link up with on the platform.

Similarly, you can set the email notification to notify you of friends’ birthdays and if your posts or photos have been tagged or someone has tagged you in a post or photo.

When you set the email address, set it to the current email inbox that you are using on a regular basis and keep these email addresses registered with the social network up to date.

Regular “drop in” to your social network

Once a month to once every two / three months, log in and post something or leave a comment on a post or photo so people know you’re “there”.

If you have something for sale, login to Facebook or your other social networks and post a public post with a picture of the item for sale and / or a link to the eBay or “online mart” page you are using to advertising it so your Facebook Friends and others on the network can know it’s for sale.

Here, you don’t forget the login parameters for your account and know that it still exists. This can come in handy if you do want to operate you account frequently like as part of a special trip or event.

It is also worth knowing that some social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ can work as an anchor to a “single-sign-on” mechanism. Here, people can use the credentials associated with these social networks to enrol with and log in to forums, blogs and similar services. If you do have an opportunity to do so, use one of these social-networks that you are enrolled in as credentials for a forum that you are joining in.

Conclusion

Keeping regular tabs on a social network that you had participated in frequently before is a way of knowing that you still exist on it and that people don’t think you have fallen off the earth if you have deserted it.

76% of 18 to 24-year-olds Browse the Internet While Watching TV | eHomeUpgrade

My comments

I have read the eHomeUpgrade article about how young people are surfing the Web while they are watching TV. There are various factors that I have observed that are encouraging this kind of activity and are based a lot on observation and experience.

Younger people being more likely to be tech-savvy

Ever since the 1980s, information technology has become a key part of one’s education in most school curriculums. Initially this started off with “computer studies” or something similarly-named being a secondary-school subject, but has moved towards computer use being integrated in to regular school studies over the last twenty years.

Similarly, most younger people have been known to adopt to newer technologies more easily than people of older age groups. This typically has been noticed by the “kids” being the ones who can work consumer-electronics devices beyond the basic requirements like setting the clock on a video recorder, or being “nimble-fingered” with the mobile phone’s keypad to send text messages.  

The current home-computing environments that promote this activity

One is the proliferation of laptops, notebooks, netbooks and similar portable computers available new or secondhand at prices that most could afford as well as smartphones that have integrated Web-browsing capability being available under subsidised-handset contract. All these devices are equipped with an integrated Wi-Fi wireless-network adaptor which allows for use-anywhere functionality.

They would typically be used in a Wi-Fi-based home networks which has coverage that extends to areas where a television set would be located like the lounge room. Another situation that also commonly exists would be the colocation of a TV set and a a computer in a teenager’s own bedroom or the lounge areas that teenagers or other young people primarily use like “games rooms”, “rumpus rooms” or simply the secondary lobby in a two-storey house.

These setups would encourage the use of an Internet-connected computer while watching TV shows, which I have seen a lot of at home with a teenager who was often had a laptop going while watching TV.

TV shows running Websites

As well, most TV studios are operating programme-specific Websites that are seen as a way of extending the programme’s value. This typically includes the providing of extra video material, Web downloads, forums and the like and is often used as a way to make the show appeal to the younger generation.

It is also supplemented by information pages like Internet Movie Database and epguides.com as well as fan-created “unofficial” Websites for the various TV shows and show genres. They will have such information like episode guides with season, episode an “first-screen” information as well as biographies for the characters in the show, cast and crew details.

In some cases, this is also tied in with Web-based “catch-up TV” where you can see recently-screened episodes as well as supplementary video material.

The Social Web

This leads me to the Social Web being the primary reason for surfing the Web while watching TV. Here, viewers use the show’s Web forums, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to chat with like-minded friends and fans, and in the case of the social networks, use “official front ends” like Facebook Pages and Twitter hashtags to participate with the show. Some TV shows like, panel shows or reality-TV shows may link these feeds in to the show’s fabric by having the compere read out selected content from the Social Web or have a ticker at the bottom of the screen showing similar information. An example of this is when ABC-TV Australia was running “Q and A” on Monday nights, they had a Twitter hashtag called #qanda and all of the Tweets with this hashtag appeared as a ticker on the bottom of the screen.

Recently there have been some social-network sites centred around TV shows where one can “check in” and chat with like-minded viewers about favourite shows.

The various social networks have been made easier to use with smartphones and similar devices either through a client app written for the popular smartphone and “Web-tablet” platforms or a handheld-optimised “mobile view” of the social network’s Web view.

Conclusion

The combination of technologically-astute young people, ubiquitous portable computers, the home network and the Internet, TV-show Websites and the Social Web all reinforce the fact that TV isn’t for lounging in front of anymore.