Tracking the social habits of people is one of the interesting things that has been made easy by social media. There are many user powered sites where people can voice out their views by making a status update like in Twitter or sending a text message or uploading a picture. Most of these sites make a provision for anonymous updates and taking a rough glance will also tell you that many users provide the update without disclosing their name and location. Here are some of the sites that fall under this category.
PS: Some of these sites may have obscene language and might not be suitable for audience of all age groups. So please be cautious. On the other hand, i can assure that this post is pretty safe for work!
FMYLife stands for Failing MY Life and it is undoubtedly the most popular site of the lot. It serves as a medium where users can let out the frustrating happenings in their daily life. As the site says “it allows you to realize that you are not alone”. The success of this site can be attributed to how people can relate themselves to the screw-ups that happen in others’ lives. A voting system with “I agree, your life sucks” and “You deserve it” helps people to cast their opinions.
TFLN or Texts From Last Night works on the interesting notion that some people prefer texts rather than conversations and also people tend to text a lot at the night time that too when they get drunk. The site asks the users to just enter the area code and the content so that it reveals the best parts and at the same time it covers personal information. In general, we will be curious to know what is happening in our locality and TFLN has rightly captured this by making a provision to segregate the updates by area code.
MyLifeIsG or My Life is Good is the reverse version of FMyLife. It documents the small but nice happenings in the daily lives of people. If you are looking for a one minute motivation, then this is the site you have to visit. If you feel that ‘your life is awesome’ then go ahead and post it over there and share your happy moment.
The reality is everyone doesn’t excel in life and MyLifeIsAverage is a site which stands as a testimony for this fact. The majority of the world lives and dies an average life and sharing those mediocrities makes things a little bit interesting. What makes this thing interesting is how insignificant stories happening in an anonymous person’s life brings in some sort of relevance/significance to the reader.
IJML or ‘I Just Made Love’ is a nice visual representation which shows where in the world people made love. A pretty good example of how the Google Maps API can be utilized! Users can update their location in real time and the site also provides nice time based filtering.
6. F**K My Sex Life
This comes from the makers of FMYlife and to quote from the site.
it’s a wonderful little site where you can share your less than desirable situations about your sex life or other people’s sex lives
Not much to explain or post a screenshot!
Users randomly text some one asking “you can tap that” and post the reply which they get. Although it may be inappropriate to do such a thing it is pretty common among college going kids!
Once again not much to explain or post a screen shot!
Every day we will have some small happy moments like finding a long lost pen or receiving a wish from a friend which will make our day. ‘It Made My Day’ is a site where you can share and read about such small and sweet happenings. It is pretty similar to MyLifeIsG.
Although this one is not similar to the other sites in the list it forms a nice conclusion. Users submit pictures of junk food which looks really good. The site also has a very nice caption-’Where dreams become heart attacks’.
One interesting similarity which can be noted in most of these websites is that as a end user we have no connection in the social graph with the poster but still we will be able to relate to it in some cases. Have you come across any other sites similar to the ones listed above? Do share it in the comments.
If there is one thing which annoys every web developer and designer it has got to be Internet Explorer and more importantly IE6. The sad fact is that a good percentage of internet users still use the age old browser either out of ignorance or force. There are many companies which use IE6 for the Intranet and installing another browser would be prohibited or the installation would involve huge deployment costs and with no alternative, the employees will be forced to use this age old browser which doesn’t confirm to any of the latest web standards.
Building web applications which use the recent HTML 5 canvas tag, java script performance features etc is not supported on IE and it is also not feasible to ignore the IE users because they still form a good percentage of the lot. Most of the developers spend a lot of time doing work around for IE users like writing different style sheets or the worst part is they ignore some of the features.
Enter “Google Chrome Frame” which is a plugin for IE and it brings in all the open web technologies in Google Chrome to the Internet Explorer. To simply put it, we can get a chrome browser inside IE by using this plugin.
If you are a developer:
All you have to do is just enter this single tag at the top of your code
<meta-http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”chrome=1″>
When this code is detected by Chrome Frame it switches over to use the web kit rendering engine and makes things awesome.
Why is Google doing it?
1. Google wants to make the web better. Understood!
2. Increase the penetration of Chrome. Most of the companies which have used IE for eons will never switch over to Chrome. This may serve as a nice incentive to try Chrome without making major changes.
3. Making Google Wave run on IE 6 will be a herculean task and the Chrome frame will ease out a lot of pain to the developers.
4. A nice way to tell Microsoft to stop IE6 support?! May be!
The big question is how many of the IE6 users are going to install the Chrome frame plugin. If they have been on IE6 for so long without having the urge to upgrade they will continue to be and the developers will keep figuring out workarounds as new technologies emerge.
Image Credit: oneBlog
It is really hard to spot a person who does not tweet or have an account on face book. Every one loves to tell the world about what they are up to and at the same time curious to know what is happening with their friends, family, colleagues etc. Celebrities belong to one big breed which keeps the social media sites hot and happening. Twitter and Facebook fan pages of celebrities serve as an avenue for the common man to get to know their heroes better and also to interact with them at times. Without the celebrities from various walks of life the social media world would definitely not be as interesting as it is now. Here are some funny instances which prove that celebrities rule social media.
1. The Million follower secret
Now there are many people and organizations with more than a million followers on Twitter. Ashton Kutcher was the first person to achieve this feat and now he is sailing strong with more than 3.6 M followers. It was an interesting competition between @cnnbrk and @aplusk as to who will reach the landmark. It is also worthy to note that Ashton was live streaming on Ustream and sharing the victory with all his fans.
2. The Tennis Hero’s twin babies
It is a well known fact that celebrity magazines pay millions of dollars to get the first photos of famous persons’ babies. Roger Federer went out of normal way and shared the first picture of his twin babies on his Facebook fan page and his 2.5 million fans on the social network would not have been more happier. This photo got more than 30000 comments and over 100 thousand people clicked on the ‘Like’ button. In the ESPN interview with Federer it was also revealed that the he was getting “2 fans per second” on the Facebook profile.
3. The Oprah Effect
Initially Twitter was something which the tech guys and the geeks used and one of the good reasons for the wide spread usage across various sectors can be attributed to Oprah Winfrey. When Oprah sent her first Tweet on April 17th 2009, Twitter saw a massive 43% traffic boost when compared with the previous week and 37% of it came from new visitors to the site. Twitter.com also went offline for a while on that day showing the infamous fail whale as it was unable to react to the Oprah effect.
4. Hits, likes and more
Twitpics posted by celebs get thousands of views within minutes and a random status message on Facebook gets several hundred comments and likes. This one is a classic example! Being a fan of The Big Bang Theory, this one from Sheldon Cooper made me chuckle.
5. The Top 100
Not a big surprise but if you look at the top 100 twitter users published by Twitterholic it is flooded with all the big celebrities. Only a few well known companies like Google, CNN, Zappos etc feature in the list and the rest of it is pretty much dominated by the celebrities.
Do you follow celebrities on Twitter, Facebook or some other social media site? Do they make the place more interesting or just use it because everyone else does?
Every single word which a person posts on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook is documented in one way or the other and at times it may even spark controversies. With the media and the weblogs craving for attention even the smallest of the controversies will spread on like a wild fire. Here are some interesting tweets which got people into trouble.
Dr. Shashi Tharoor is the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and he is pretty active on Twitter with more than 180k followers. A random follower asked Tharoor if he will travel in economy class and he replied in a witty manner targeting the airlines but the Indian National Congress condemned his tweet stating that it was not in line with the political culture.
The newspapers and the TV channels also picked this up and made it even more controversial.
2) The Cisco Fatty
@theconnor tweeted:
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
In reply @timmylevad tweeted
@theconnor Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.
This was probably the first well known ‘Twitter trouble’ incident where a guy who was offered a job in Cisco tweeted negatively about it and he eventually ended up losing the job. @theconnor has now protected his twitter time line and has also created a site where he has written a detailed explanation about the incident.
3) Terry Moran and Barrack Obama
@TerryMoran tweeted
Terry Moran, the ABC anchor tweeted saying that President Obama called Kayne West a jackass. ABC later apologised for the immature tweet made by Moran and stated that Obama made that statement off the record
4) The CPK server
@Traphik tweeted
@calpizzakitchen black button ups are the lamest shit ever!!!.
Timothy DeLaGhetto worked at the California Pizza Kitchen and he tweeted the above statement and later he was fired as CPK thought it was inappropriate. Ironically @Traphik became famous on Twitter and now has more than 17500 people following his updates.
5) Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban, the owner of Dallas Mavericks criticized the decision of the match officials on Twitter and the NBA fined him $25000 for making such remarks.
6) Courtney Love
@courtneylover79 tweeted
is my clothes my WARDROBE! oi vey don’t **** with my wradrobe or you willend up in a circle of corched eaeth hunted till your dead.
Courtney Love, the rock star made some defamatory comments about her fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir after she sent Courtney an invoice for the clothes she designed. The result, Courtney was sent a lawsuit for her rants on twitter!
7) The Military Twitterer
Mark Kirk, the republican congressman and Navy Reservist tweeted while on duty at the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center. It is against the Military protocol to reveal one’s location and duties. Kirk later made a public statement saying that “It’s something that I will not do again,”.
When you are in public domain it is always good to look before you tweet and look before you follow.
Most of the PC users are anxiously waiting for the final release of Windows 7 but one thing which will stop a good percentage of them from buying it is the big price tag attached with the new operating system from Microsoft. If you are a student there is one more reason to smile! Microsoft has always been nice to the student community and now with the big release of Windows 7 they are being even more nice. With a valid .edu email address students can get the Home edition of Windows 7 for $29.99 which is a big steal when compared to the normal retail price of $120. The glad news is you don’t have to be a current student and if you still have your .edu address from your university working you are good to go. You can preorder Windows 7 at Win741.com. Multiple updates about this offer were made on the official Microsoft and MSWindows twitter accounts
Earlier Windows 7 was made available to all the student members of ACM (Association of Computing Machniery) but Lillian Israel, the Director of ACM memberships sent over a mail stating that many non-computing students were joining ACM just to get Windows 7 license and hence they have removed it from the Developer Academic Alliance. But still many other worthy software packages are offered as a part of the student membership. I am a current ACM student member and when I logged in to my web account i was surprised to see that Win XP, Win Vista, Visual studio, Visio etc were offered for free to the student members. The membership also provides many elearning resources apart from discounts for ACM conference registrations. The ACM membership page provides more information about the benefits.
It is really important to have an online identity because the first thing which a prospective employer or a customer or a business acquaintance is going to do is to perform a Google search for your name. You don’t want to have some of your drunken pictures or bad comments showing up when your name is searched for. We should always remember that everything we do online is getting documented in some way or the other and also the information is available openly for everyone to see. There are some simple steps which will help to boost your personal reputation in the internet world.
Image Credit: Geek and Poke
1. Create your blog or homepage
It is always good to have a personal blog or a homepage where people can find information about you. Getting a domain name with your first and/or last name in it is really a good practice and it will feed some nice value to the search engines. Having relevant keywords in the domain name is one of the common strategies which search engine optimizers follow. In most cases it might not be possible to get a domain name which is same as your name. In such cases try alternative domain extensions or domain hacking. If you are blogging under a brand name make sure that your full name is prominently visible in the about section and in all other places possible (Eg: Posted by John Kramer). If you are a student, putting up your resume and contact information on the homepage is a good practice.
2. Social media profiles
Creating profiles on the prominent social networks will definitely boost your online presence. One important thing to keep in mind while creating profiles in social media sites like Twitter, Delicious, Digg etc is to have a consistent user name. Like in the previous case, it is good to have your first name/last name combination as your user name rather than having something like zombieking or techieboy. Just creating the profile and leaving it deserted is of no use. There are many cases where people have found their prospective employers via social media channels and it is always good to be participative. Creating a professional profile on LinkedIn and furnishing the right details will be of good help to explore a lot of opportunities and get new professional contacts.
3. Think before your post
Every status update which you post on Twitter or every comment which you write on your friend’s face book wall is getting archived. It is always good to think for a second before your post. Swearing is one thing which most of us are good at but keeping it off the online world is a big ‘to-do’ if you are looking to have a positive reputation. Bitching about your current or past employer is a big no and so is foul mouthing about products or services in public space. Being careful and choosy about your online contacts is a plus and it is also good to look before you follow.
4. No drunken pictures
A recent study by Careerbuilder.com revealed that 45% of employers looked at social profiles of the candidates whom they were looking to hire. Drunken photos, reference to drug usage, swearing are some of the reasons why candidates were denied. The good lesson which we can learn from this study is to keep our Facebook profile clean and untag all the drunken pictures posted by friends.
5.Track,Track,Track
Track who is talking about you. Some of the methods to do this are to check your @replies on twitter and set up Google alerts for your name. Although this is more important for brands, it works out well for individuals too.
6. Google Yourself
Google yourself or Ego surf and see if things look fine when your name is searched for. Although nothing much can be done for the existing results, doing the steps listed above in the right way may change the results in your favor over a period of time.
One good measure of authority although not accurate in the social media world is the number of twitter followers a person has. To make your Twitter time line interesting, informative and interactive you should follow the right folks. Deciding whom to follow and who not to follow is not an easy task. Doing a keyword based mass follow will result in a nice increase in your follower count due to reciprocation but it would also result in endless ramblings (mostly irrelevant and useless) on your time line. Here are some pointers which will help you in deciding who to follow.
1. The Big Names
Following the big guys has both advantages and disadvantages. For instance if you are in the tech industry it will be good to follow some popular guys like Scobleizer or Arrington (TechCrunch). You will get first hand information about the latest happenings in the industry but you should be ready to be bombarded with other tweets too. The Wefollow directory is a nice place to find new people to follow from different arenas.
2. Common Interest
One important thing to keep the updates not so boring is to follow people who have some common interests. It you are into music then following music composers, singers etc will help to spark some interesting conversations and Twitter can also be a nice medium to get new contacts.
3. The Ratio
The follower/following ratio should be at an optimal level. If a person follows 2000 people and just has 25 people following him/her back then the account will probably be used for spamming. It is better not to follow such accounts as those tweets will be of little or no value. It is always good to follow users who have a follower/following ratio less than 1 and it is also good maintain the ratio on our own account although it may be a little hard initially.
4.Local Community
Some of the best tweets which i see daily are from the people who live in my town. Connecting with people in your locality is good fun. Attending Tweetups is the best way to find new people to follow and get followed in reciprocation but some sites like local tweeps will also help you to find some interesting folks. The user search feature from Twitter Grader is much more powerful and it uses a ranking algorithm and lists the top twitterers in your locality.
5. The knowledgeable
This is one of my personal favorites. I always follow people who know something that i don’t know but i am willing to know more. Some good examples of the twitters who come in this categories are subject matter experts like designers, researchers, elite bloggers, your seniors at work, associates etc. It is always good to follow such people even if they don’t follow you back because it will not only help you learn something new but it may also broaden your skill set in an indirect way.
6. Number of Tweets
Whenever you follow some one just look at their number of tweets per day. Although it doesn’t harm to have inactive twitters in your list, it is really annoying to follow people who tweet anything and everything they do. It is good to set a personal limitation (follow people who publish less than 30 tweets per day) and this will ensure that good tweets don’t get buried amidst useless ramblings. This number depends on the time which you are willing to spend on Twitter.
7.Recommendation Tools
You can also find new Twitter friends with the help of recommendation tools like Mr.Twitter and Who Should i follow. These tools will pick users who are similar to the people whom you currently follow.Users can also suggest other users and make recommendations in Mr.Tweet
It may take only a couple of seconds to think before you click the Follow button but the good thing is that we do have the option to unfollow!
Remembering numerous passwords is really hard and having a same password across various sites is risky. It is really tedious to create accounts by filling the registration forms in various sites and the perfect solution to this comes in the form of social sign on. The single sign on solution Open ID created a lot of buzz some time back but many people are still not aware of the concept. The first hurdle is that many don’t know that they can use their existing account login credentials from popular sites (Flickr,Google,Yahoo) on Open ID enabled sites.
If you own a membership based website or a portal it is definitely worthy to enable social sign on. To clear the mist surrounding the concept of social sign on, it is nothing but providing an opportunity for the user to sign in to a website with their existing accounts on Twitter,Facebook, WordPress etc without creating an account. Enabling single sign on will improve the user registrations on the site and gathering user data also becomes really simple.
How can you enable single/social sign on?
RPX Now is a really nice service which will act as a bridge between your website and the identity providers. It provides a login interface which shows the various third party providers enabled for the website. The user can just click on any one of those and it will automatically create an account and map the corresponding login credentials.
When the user comes back to visit the site, RPX Now will remember the third party service which they used the previous time. Then, the user can sign in with a single click verification process.
Plug-ins for WordPress & Drupal
Integrating RPXNow into your website is pretty simple. All you have to do is get the API key from the website and follow the simple installation instructions. The sign in interface can be embedded in the web page or it can be displayed as a pop-up.
If you are running a site built on WordPress or Drupal your task has become much more simpler. There is a wordpress plugin and a drupal module which will help to enable social sign on in your website with ease.
The admin interface of RPX Now provides ways for customizations, account mapping, configuring the third part providers and many more features. RPX Now also provides a plus account and a pro account which gives additional features like social publishing, customizable login interface etc
Enabling social sign on will increase the interaction in the website apart from paving the way for more user registrations. Enabling it in the comments section is also a wise option as this will encourage more users to post comments. The Intense Debate commenting system has an integrated Twitter Sign in and a facebook connect.
ClickPass is a similar service which lets you sign in to websites without revealing your password. These services will definitely enhance the security and also makes the sign in process lot more convenient.
