Chatterbox : Flickr

An Intro to Social Media

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:52:00 GMT

We talk about social media, just a little bit , on our Blackbaud blogs. But maybe you're wondering why you should care or you know what it is but need to know more. Where do you go to find more information? I had a friend/professional peer ask me that very question this morning. Where do you begin? Specifically she wanted to know..."if I'm looking for basic, very basic information on social media do you know of any good sites to start with?"

Here's how I responded:

Hmmm... I'm not really sure. Most of social media education is just immersing yourself in the different types of social media/networking websites. I would recommend dabbling on different websites like - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, StumbeUpon, feed aggregators like Google Reader, Plaxo, a wiki site like one from Wetpaint, Hulu, Flixster, Last.fm, LinkedIn, and Digg. To learn social media is to observe how different mediums online encourage community participation. How does bringing the community into the content development process change websites, media, etc? And honestly, the best sites for reading about emerging social media right now are blogs.
Here's a couple good ones to get started with -
Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ (you can spend a long time on his site, he's a prolific blogger)
Beth Kanter (she does social media for nonprofits) http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/

And like I told my friend, I hope this helps! Good luck getting started and like my friend, feel free to ask questions (of me) and of those you find to observe on social media websites. I find immersion in the practice of social media the best way to learn!

Social Media and Privacy Settings

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Lately, when something hasn’t been working, in between projects, or waiting for edits, I decided to try a little experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I played with my privacy settings on some social media sites like myspace, facebook, flickr, and more. While it did make me uncomfortable because it is after all, my privacy, I wondered if the value of transparency outweighed my need to protect my own information. Which, if you think about it, is rather silly because anything you put online has no real privacy - it’s online! If you don't want something to be shared (or misused), don't use the internet! I'm one of those believers that anything can be hacked.

What does this mean for your information? Your profiles? Your social media efforts? Your organization's information?

I can't give you the answer, I can only help you question yourself and figure out the answer on your own. Because after all, the more we learn about the terms of agreement of social media websites, the better educated you are to know what you should and shouldn’t share online. When does your content suddenly become not yours? And, when does your privacy cease to be private?

What did I learn from my privacy experiment?

I had one random person contact me based on making my profile more available... Hmmm my content must not be that appealing. Lesson Learned - Transparency doesn't mean people will flock to you.
Instead, it just meant I had no clue who was seeing my information. They didn't have to ask permission first. Lesson Learned – Unless you have an analytics tool like Google Analytics, open content doesn’t yield you much insight into your users.
If you have too tight rules around privacy, it will be hard for people to find you. Lesson Learned – Make it easy for people to find and connect with you. Once they do, you can work on making the connections more meaningful.
There are so many settings you have control over on social media sites like Facebook. Lesson Learned – Take some time to browse through the settings, read the help information available, and play with what settings work for your organization. I found it’s nice to have different privacy settings on different sites depending on the content available. On a site like Facebook where I connect with family and friends in addition to my professional work, it’s nice to have more privacy.

Maybe my overall lesson learned however is that it’s easy to set custom privacy settings. However, the unsettling part is deciding what content to share and what settings work best. Never put content online you wouldn’t want the whole world to see even if it’s “private.”

A Flickr Suggestion

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:49:00 GMT

Ever been frustrated trying to find an image when you use Google search? I usually like the Google search especially when you can choose file size. However, I don't always find the quality or the artistic value I'm looking for. Lately, I've been using Flickr to search for an image I need. On Flickr, photographers of all skill levels get to share their passion and consequently there is an abundance of some pretty amazing pictures. Yes, some have spent some time in the photoshop lab but either way, the diveristy and quantity of choices are the highlight. One really great feature Flickr provides is hidden in the Advanced Search.

The last section of the Advanced Search is the Creative Commons section. This is where you can choose to search for photos that Flickr users have given permission, yes explicit permission, for you to use their work. Since I use photos from here for non-commercial use 99% of the time, I just mark the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content checkbox. But, you might want to consider marking the Find content to use commercially or Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon checkboxes.

My favorite thing about Creative Commons? Well when I find an image I like under this license, I get all the file sizes to choose from. And when you're designing things for print or the web, having a choice of file sizes is key. Oh and last piece of advice, don't forget to give credit where credit is due.

Here's an image I found when I searched for Charleston, SC

Thanks to Micah A. Ponce for the brilliant image.