Twitter posts

There are many distractions during the work day, but one of the biggest culprits is undoubtedly social media. That quick check of Facebook, can sometimes turn into an hour or so. On average, workers are interrupted once every 10.5 minutes and 28% of the day is spent on interruptions and recovery time. Also, 23 minutes is the average time it takes a worker to get back to their assigned task. And to think, 45% of workers believe they are expected to work on too many things at once. It might be time to stray from your Facebook for a while and focus on your task at hand. Not only does being distracted affect you…

Those of us that use social media as a platform to share information through articles from various blogs and websites (including our own) whether it is for personal or professional use, like to be able to see the impact of the effort. The social networking site, Twitter, has become the perfect place for article sharing in particular since you can tweet as much as you like without worrying as much about clogging the feeds or being auto-hidden by its algorithm like on other social networks. Therefore we not only share what is on our minds, but interesting reads that we have discovered or written across…

We have all been wondering what the deal has been with Twitter cutting off third-party apps from their site and perhaps we now know why. In the past few days Twitter has announced a new feature known as “embeddable tweets”, giving its users a fresher way of connecting. Though the changes for developers have caused frustration, Twitter seems to want its users to be more active on their site as opposed to using third-party apps. However, it seems as though Twitter realizes that not everyone will go directly to their site to communicate, therefore they have designed a new tool that is accessible…

On a recent post on Mashable, New York’s finest are commemorating their fallen brothers of September 11th with Twitter. The NYPD are honoring the victims of the horrific terrorist attacks eleven years ago by tweeting the name and rank of a fallen comrade and linking back to a more detailed Facebook page along with #neverforget. September 11th will be a day that all Americans will never forget. The NYPD’s use of social media is more than just a status update or a celebrity tweet. This honor to fallen heroes reminds us all that social media can still be a platform to instill good amongst us. Let us…

If you are unfamiliar with the label “n00b”, “noob”, or “newbie”, here is the definition according to Wikipedia: “Newbie, newb, n00b or noob is a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in any profession or activity.” Although the term is spelled in various forms and mostly pertains to gaming, the word itself has spilled over into the social media world. Often referring to a person who is just learning how to use a social network or perhaps even the concept of social media. Although the definition matches the label of a newcomer it is not an appropriate word…

I have a confession to make; I am guilty of writing too much when trying to explain something via Skype, or through a chat messaging system. It has been often said “What are you writing a book?” and then I switched to making sure I pressed enter after every few sentence to prevent hearing that again. But it got me thinking, since the original caps on characters began with text messaging we have really shorten how much we truly want to read in a messaging format. Twitter mimicked this behavior by completely tapping into our short attention spans. …

As bloggers we want our written articles to be seen, read and commented on. We want to provoke thought, teach something new, share news-worthy content with our readers and discover trends to connect us through the written word. However, I have noticed that many will publish an article and then walk away and it makes me wonder why, why would you take the time to write something and not use the provided share buttons on the website or blog? (I hope we are past the stage of not having social buttons) Discovery is only a part of the process, yes you added it to relevant categories and ensured there were tags/keywords…

It seemed to me that Twitter was the quiet social network of the bunch, never openly in hot water like Facebook or causing chatters about its ability to be social like G+. They were much like the kid who sat in the back of the class letting everyone else do all the talking (perhaps this should have been a sign). …

From August 16th to 19th, I attended Gen Con, a hobby game convention held in the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis. The four-day convention was attended by over 41,000 unique individuals this year, which marked its most successful year to date. Started in 1967, Gen Con is one of the world’s first gaming conventions. Unlike the NY and CA Comic Cons, or E3, Gen Con is mainly focused on tabletop games, like Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and board games like Settlers of Catan. Attendance numbers for Gen Con peaked in the mid-90s at around 30,000 unique visitors,…

Social media is fragile right now. The Facebook IPO failure (which followed several less-publicized failures by other social media sites) has investors questioning the validity of pouring money into social startups. The model went from unproven to disproven in many ways over the last couple of years after the disastrous turns that sites like MySpace, Digg, and AOL’s Netscape/Propeller took after promising starts. The news that Diaspora’s founders have “moved on” puts another black eye on the face of social media. At some point, they’re going to run out of eyes to blacken. What makes this less…