Google has allowed some internet famous people to say, "I don’t carry cards, just google me." For the rest of us, business cards are still a great way to keep track of the people we meet and a great way for the people who meet us to remember our names. Yea, you can google me, but only if you can remember my name.
Looking for some great ideas for business cards? (fyi – they don’t need to be boring) Check out: The Business Card pool on Flickr. Here is my card:
The social web is creating great opportunities for product research. Paul Kedrosky has been suggesting that web services will be “honey pots” for data. He explains, “Usage of such services throws off wonderfully rich data that is almost certainly of use to someone, but too often it is not captured and represented in a usable form.”
Paul gets his wish. Our favorite social picture service, Flickr, is now letting us all have a peak into picture meta-data. The feature is called camera finder as explained by Stewart (founder of Flickr):
See the most popular cameras on Flickr, search by camera model, check our macro, portrait, night and action shots from each model, see the trends for camera usage by manufacturer and find reviews and pricing information – it’s like a whole, um, camera finder on a web site! If you’re curious about the capabilities of a new cameraphone, how good the little point and shoots are going or what people are using the latest digital SLRs for, it’s a pretty fantastic resource.
Paul suggests that the data generated from your web application (i.e. for example Pingomatic) might be worth more than the actual service. Be careful with your data, but remember it is likely very valuable.
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Stowe Boyd has an extensive post titled, “Efficiency v Belonging: The Real Heart of Social Tools” where he proposes that many of the critics of social tools are chasing a red herring when they claim social tools do not improve personal productivity. Stowe correctly points out that this “lynch mob” is barking up the wrong tree.
Social tools were never really designed to improve productivity or efficiency (some may in fact do so), but instead he suggests that social tools “are about social involvement, learning and enlarging perspectives through connection…”
My favorite social tools (that don’t save me time) include: Upcoming.org, Wikipedia and Flickr. Why? They help me stay connected. In the case of Yahoo’s Upcoming and Flickr, they help me connect to a small group of people who I care about. In the case of Wikipedia it helps me stay connected to the world. Just ask my wife if adding pictures to Flickr help me save time…
I wrote about Upcoming a while back in a post titled, “My Favorite Social Tools: Upcoming” and I am pleased to announce that Upcoming is getting better. Yahoo has announced they have added a number of new features including:
More of you need to start using social tools so I decided to start a little series of posts called My Favorite Social Tools. I will start off with Flickr. Wow what a great tool. I have been a paid user since July of 2005 (I only know this because I had to renew my account the other day). At first I did not understand why Flickr was so great, but as the number of people I met from around the world added me as a Flickr contact I understood the value of Flickr. Let me start with the basics:
What: Flickr is a social picture sharing site started in 2004 by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake. The best feature of flickr is the ability to add one or more “tags” to each photograph added to the site. Why is this so powerful? Take me for example: I have more than 8,000 photos on Flickr and finding a specific picture would be impossible if it were not for the tagging function. Each time I added a photo of my son I used the tag ethanmuse, that helps me narrow my search to just photos of him. But I have more than 1,000 photos of my favorite little guy, but good news, I used other tags such as soccer to describe the photos in greater detail. So I use the advanced search feature and search for photos of ethanmuse and soccer and find his soccer photos. You get the idea. Ethan’s Grandmother can search my photos for her tag (bethmuse) and Ethan’s tag to find photos containing both her and my son. Neat huh?
For Networking: I live in Dallas, Texas, but I have met lots of people on the West coast that I want to keep in touch with. It is hard to stay in touch with people you don’t see more than once or twice a year. More often than not I don’t have anything to say, certainly not anything worthy of an email or an IM, but I want to stay connected. Each day when I log into Flickr I am presented with the most recent picture added by each of my contacts. Usually five or six of my contacts has added a new picture each time I log in, so I open each photo in a browser tab. If the photo is comment worthly I might just make a note. Why? Why do you say hi in the hall when you walk by someone? It is a good way to say, “hey I am interested in you and your life, thanks for sharing it with me.” I know I love it when someone comments on one of my photos. Earlier this year I went to India and met almost 200 programmers and business people, many of whom have Flickr accounts. I have been able to stay connected to them from across the globe with pictures.
For Business: Back in April I wrote a posted titled, “Flickr as PR Tool…EyeFi” and wrote, “Got a great new product? Want to get a lot of people to see it? Get a power user on Flickr to take a picture of it. Scott Beale, also known as Laughing Squid, is a well know photographer. In fact, he may be the second most ‘internet famous’ photographer (Thomas Hawk is perhaps the most famous). So if you are going to create a product for photographers call up Scott and get him to take a picture of it. That is exactly what the Yuval Koren, the guy behind Eye-Fi, did. What is Eye-Fi? An SD memory card that will turn your camera into a wi-fi camera – no more USB cable. This is going to be huge! And Yuval, by simply showing it to one of the best know ‘internet famous’ photographer is getting his product in front of thousands of people who WILL buy the Eye-Fi. Very smart. More on Gizmodo here.” Check out Scott’s eyefi flickr pics.
To Do: Okay get a Flickr account right away. Add me as a contact, add a photo, tag it with a couple of tags (be specific) and lets start being social. You can setup your phone to send photos directly to Flickr (lots of people do it). You can use your photos to make books, prints, calenders and so on. Have fun!
Let me first explain that I am a huge fan of Flickr (I have over 7,000 photos on the service), but since I heard Thomas Hawk is joining Zooomr I have decided to give it a try. Brian was visiting Mike Arrington when Kristopher Tate was showing off his new photo site called Zooomr. Brian was knocked out! Mike wrote about it in a post titled, “Flickr on Steroids.“ But I was unconvinced, I never bothered to set up an account because Flickr isn’t broken for me – it is great!
That all changed when I saw Brian’s post that Thomas Hawk (one of my favorite photographers on Flickr) is joining the Zooomer team. Holy Bat-pictures! Why is he joining Zooomr? Is Zooomr important? Isn’t it just a Flickr clone? Hm… I better find out more. Usually, once I settle on a platform there is a huge amount of inertia keeping as a user. Unless something is broken or there is a huge advantage to switching I will stick it out. I still haven’t set up a Zooomr account, but my interest has been piqued by Thomas Hawk’s action.
I am sure I am not alone in my surprise. Isn’t it interesting how a single, influential person like Thomas Hawk can make a business relevant?
You send out free t shirts because 1) t shirts are fun & you are fun and 2) people will put them on, snap a photo and post them to flickr. And because you really want to be the skinnycorp boyz when you grow up.
