Social media has become the buzzword of the new millennium. As more and more people begin to cocoon within their own little environment social interaction within the real world begins to deteriorate.

As a child I remember the neighborhood was a community. Your family interacted with other families living around them. Yards rarely had fences and everyone congregated in front of their houses. When they saw neighbors out they went out of their way to greet them and engage in conversation.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed that neighborhoods and communities have changed. Now there are gated communities where people are locked behind enclosed fortresses. Everyone has a walled fence around their property and few people venture outside of their home or converse with anyone outside of their family.

Perhaps this is a function of growth and change or perhaps it is indicative of the fear people are developing about the horrors of society. No matter the reasons, people have become closed off from others.

Humans are by nature social creatures and this isolation is difficult for many to manage. With the proliferation of the Internet and immediate communication channels, communities have emerged in the digital world. People feel safe hiding behind a keyboard and screen knowing that if they are rejected there are thousands of others who will accept them.

These social media communities are similar to those created on this continent during the expansion westward in the early days of this country. Rather than travelling by wagon train or horse, the adventurers are arriving via the browser.

If the traveler feels comfortable, they may stay in the community building it up adding another resident. Many though are just passing through trying to find a place to settle where they feel comfortable. In this case the traveler may create an account in a community then wander away to continue searching for the right place.

In some cases like myself, I am more of a mountain man. I may be gone for an extended period of time then return to one settlement or another trading my wares with the local citizens then disappearing again into the wilderness.

From this perspective it sometimes becomes hard for a community to find you since you come and go with the seasons. What is needed is a mailbox or some way for the other settlers to know who this mysterious man is that wanders into their community.

For that reason I created a Social Media Hub. This is a type of address book where settlers can go to find out what my address in the various Social Media communities. The hub resides on my personal web site and graphically displays each of the social communities where I belong.

This is a Joomla module that I wrote. In the administration tool the Social Media Hub module will track your social media profile for 56 different social media web sites. For each of these you can enter your user name and it will direct site visitors to the appropriate profile page on each service.

So far it has worked quite well. I have set it to be able to adjust the icon size and icon type. Through testing on the 26 different social media sites I personally have accounts for it seems to be working as designed.

Now when someone wants to find me on a specific social media site all they have to do is visit my web page and click on the appropriate icon and it will redirect them to my profile allowing them to send me a message. The next time I wander out of the wilderness and visit that social media community I will have a message.

I stumbled across the Plurk social networking site in June 2008. I had been using Twitter for a while but was struggling with how to make use of the tool to establish communication. Twitter was great for broadcasting out a message but the Plurk interface was much better at providing a visual conversation and message flow.

After trying out Plurk for a few days I was clearly hooked. It allowed me not only to easily find others who had similar interests but actually facilitated conversations. The horizontal timeline did take some getting used to and the service continues to go through some growing pains but overall it has been much more stable than Twitter for my use.

Another important aspect that kept me close to Plurk was its ability to be “themed”. The Plurk developers made an early decision to allow users to modify the look and feel of their profile and timeline through the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This really connected with my artistic side and soon I was creating outlandish themes just to entertain myself.

With my Movable Type blog I searched for an extension that would allow me to notify followers of my Plurk timeline whenever I updated my blog. Since Plurk has not officially released an API to allow developers to extend their service, it was difficult to find anyone who had created a Movable Type to Plurk communication module. I found one but shortly after I started using it, it stopped working and the developer fell off the face of the earth.

When I moved my blog to WordPress I thought I would try again to see if someone had developed a Plurk to blog plug-in this time for WordPress. Fortunately Herdian Ferdianto developed the WP-Plurk plug-in that did exactly what I wanted.

The plug-in is installed through the WordPress Administrators Dashboard like any other plug-in. Once it has been installed, you will find a new page under the Settings tab of the Administrator Dashboard. You have three input fields to enter data. These include your Plurk username, your Plurk password, and finally Plurk Template.

Of the three only the Plurk Template field requires any introduction. Here you will describe what you want WP-Plurk to post to your Plurk timeline. For my purposes I entered [shares} {{url}} ({{title}}) The [shares] means that the post to Plurk will include the Plurk qualifier Shares. The next two entries will post the URL of the WordPress post followed by the post title in parenthesis. I did this so that Plurk would make the title a clickable link to the URL.

The WP-Plurk plug-in works flawlessly. It allows WordPress posts to be included on my personal timeline and provides a way to allow me to interact with Plurk users and create conversation based upon my blog posts. Using this plug-in I have introduced new readers to my blog and I have been able to meet several new people on Plurk who have similar interests.

This is definitely a well written plug-in that is a must for anyone who is using the Plurk service. I highly recommend this extension to anyone having a WordPress blog.

We have now lived in Arizona over 14 years. A lot of our family still lives in Idaho and Utah. As a result we find ourselves making the trek from Arizona to Idaho quite often (more often than I would like that’s for sure). We have gotten to where we have a fairly well mapped out path from point A to point B and back. This path is the result of trying just about every different roadway that goes between these three states. And what I have learned from all of this is that there really is no good way to get from Arizona to Idaho without subjecting yourself to a lot of small highways or back roads. I don’t so much mind driving the back country but it does have its drawbacks. For example there are large stretches of road that have absolutely nothing on them. Driving from Flagstaff Arizona northward for example takes you across Indian Reservations that barely have phone service let alone rest stops or places to get something to eat or drink. Even cellular service is spotty. Digital phone service is impossible and analog roaming is even questionable. This situation remains in effect through part of southern Utah as well at least until you can get near the Interstate when there are at least some cellular towers to give you adequate phone service.

This lack of communications choices has a couple of effects. First it is a little nerve wracking to think that if you had car troubles or were running behind you may not be able to get help via your phone and would instead have to rely on the friendly intentions of others on the road. Given today’s society that is not the most comforting thought I have ever had going into a vacation. The other less drastic problem is the fact that if you happen to be travelling to meet someone it is difficult to make sure and let them know if something comes up. This is further complicated when there are multiple parties involved with wanting status on your trip or where you are at. In times past we almost were required to create a phone tree where one person would call someone else who would in turn call someone else. This is akin to the old telephone game where you started out with a message and passed it from person to person. By the end the message was completely different than what it started. I was determined that this trip was going to be different.
I had recently written an entry on micro-blogging services and thought they may hold merit for this particular problem I was trying to solve. Rather than calling everyone I knew or setting up a complicated calling tree to notify everyone of our current location I would instead update the micro-blogging services and those who were interested could subscribe to my timelines to see where we were. Using Ping FM would make this especially easy since this allowed me to update most of the more popular social network sites with my status. That way people could chose whatever network they were most comfortable; whether it be Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Facebook, or any of the other countless services there were. Since I first wrote the post on micro-blogging I have since gotten a lot more interested in this technology. I have especially become enamored with Plurk. This service has become much better and continues to evolve. It so far seems to have been immune to the scalability issues that have plagued Twitter and does provide with a more intuitive way of managing conversations. Periodically through the trip I would send an email or text message to Ping FM and it would in turn post my whereabouts and whatever I happened to mention I was doing. What I had not anticipated was that complete strangers would see these status posts and comment upon them. It has been a fun and interesting experience as I try to explain the various points of our vacation. It was almost like sharing “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” while I was still on the trip. I plan to continue posting updates each day for the remainder of our trip. It has been helpful to family members wanting to know where we are but it has also allowed me to meet some new people and make friends I might not have otherwise done. I have gotten a new appreciation for social networking.

Social networking has gotten a lot of press recently. As the Internet continues to mature people try to understand what it can be used for and how it might add value to their lives. One niche that began with the younger crowd but soon reached mainstream was the blog. Blog which is short for weblog began as a way for someone to maintain a log of information on the web. It was just a few short years ago that if you interviewed the typical person on the street they would have no idea what a blog was let alone tell you that they had one. People were still getting their feet wet on the Internet and having a web site made up of a few static pages was seen as a luxury for the rich and technically advanced. I remember when I first built Now Hitting. It was primarily a series of static pages that I hand coded with individual styles. I had what would probably be classified as a precursor to a blog that I called “Diary of a Diehard”. This was again hand coded but allowed me an area where I could write small entries about baseball and specifically the Arizona Diamondbacks. This was one of the more popular aspects of Now Hitting and drew by far the most visitors to the site. It was also one of the more painful areas to maintain as I had to create a new page per entry and I was coding each of them by hand. Not really the most efficient use of my time but I could definitely see value in it.

Moving forward a few years saw an explosion of interest in the Blog format. Companies and software packages sprung up giving would-be writers and web designers new tools that could simplify the management of a blog. After reviewing several of these packages I chose Movable Type as my platform. It seemed like a good combination of features coupled with ease of use and scalability. I don’t regret that decision. I have gone through several iterations of their software and feel fairly comfortable that I made the right choice. That doesn’t mean there have not been challenges. I am still fighting with the template files of my photo blog 1Photo2Share as I try to figure out how to get comments to show up in a separate pop-up window. This functionality was available in earlier versions of Movable Type but has been removed in the 4.1 release. This continues to be a thorn in my side and one I need to devote time to solving. The great thing about blogging is that it gives you an avenue for creativity and perhaps sharing something that someone else might be able to use. The problem is that the Internet is a huge place and getting larger with every passing moment. Trying to get your message and your blog out to the general public takes a lot of work and a lot of time; two things I don’t seem to have a lot of in my life. What I needed was a way that I could begin networking with others who might have similar interests and letting them know about my blogs. Hopefully that would spark interest and they would then share my sites with their friends who would share with their friends and so forth. The opposite would also be true, I would be able to find new sites and be exposed to new writers that could then share with my friends. It becomes a matter of traffic manipulation and weeding through the noise levels to find the gems on the Internet. This seems like a natural fit for a social network and in particular a micro-blogging service.
Micro-blogging is the latest in tools and technologies that attempts to connect people. It’s primary purpose began as a way for friends to let other friends know what they were doing or where they were doing it. In its basic form it provides for a text entry of roughly 140 characters which is the equivalent of 2 typewritten lines. The goal of micro-blogging is not to provide an avenue for writers to write entries but rather status or brief updates. As an added benefit you can also send links to notify friends when you have visited or updated web pages or blogs. When first started you saw the status of everyone using the micro-blogging service. When it was small that worked rather well. As more and more users found the service this became overwhelming. The services adapted and allowed you to choose whose status you were following. This is done a concept appropriately called “following”. You can follow an individual which means that their updates show on your feed. They in turn could choose to follow you in return meaning they would see your updates. By managing your friends and contacts you can decide what information and who you are interested in. As your needs and friends change you can modify your follow lists to react accordingly.
One of the earliest and most popular of these sites is Twitter. The great thing about Twitter is that it is the biggest meaning a lot of your friends may already be on the service. Enrollment in Twitter is easy and it’s free. Once you have an account you can begin searching for people and following them. Depending on who you are following and how pervasive Twitter is within their lives this feed may be very fast moving. You can find me on Twitter through my Twitter feed. Besides a brief status that I may add, I have also incorporated several automated feeds to notify Twitter of changes in my electronic life. Whenever I update this blog, Diary of a Diehard, or post a picture to 1Photo2Share I have Movable Type post an update to Twitter that notifies everyone of the new entry along with a link to go read it in its entirety. I’ve also included a Twitter Widget on my web page to show the last entry I made to Twitter. Using an application called Now Playing I have incorporated iTunes into my Twitter feed so that it sends Twitter the name of the song I am currently listening to. It works as a type of visualizer. Not only does Now Playing update Twitter but I have also incorporated it into Joomla so that it will show the song, album art, and rating on my web page. I also have it set so that it will look up the song on iTunes and provide a link to it in case you want to listen to that track or purchase it. This is what happens when you have way too much time on your hands.
While Twitter has a lot of interesting uses, one thing it does not do well is provide for conversation. It was never designed for that. It was always developed to provide a short status to friends and family nothing more. Users though want some type interaction and there is not a day go by that you don’t see members attempting to talk with each other via Twitter. It’s painful to watch or keep track of the various replies and responses. Because of this shortcoming a new micro-blogging service was born; one that made conversation a little easier. Plurk is similar to Twitter in that it allows you to post short messages of 140 characters or less. This is where the similarity more or less ends. Plurk uses a timeline metaphor that shows messages moving from left to right similar to a project plan timeline. Plurk also allows you to respond to other’s Plurk entries and these responses are held with the original entry allowing users to maintain a conversation amongst themselves. Plurk will notify you of new entires and new responses. Like Twitter you can choose to follow specific individuals. Plurk describes these relationships in two ways. You can add someone as a “friend” which establishes a two-way follow of communications or you can become a “fan” of someone where you are following their Plurk entries but they do not necessarily follow yours.
One interesting and sometimes annoying concept in Plurk is that of Karma. Karma is Plurk’s way of rewarding or punishing behavior on their system. At its basic level Karma will increase when you use the service and penalize you if you are not an active member. The problem is that Karma is not well defined from a user’s perspective so if you overuse the system or people cease to befriend you or follow your timeline your Karma takes a hit. It’s interesting but somewhat meaningless. The problem is that Plurk uses this Karma number to lock or unlock features causing everyone to get caught up in the Karma game. I have found that I am spending more time on Plurk than on Twitter just because of the conversational nature of the service. You can find me via my Plurk feed link. While Plurk has a lot of possibilities, it too has its share of problems. It is painfully difficult to find friends and lacks a simple search tool for finding conversations or people. It does allow importing friends from some other services but the usage and success of that is questionable at best. The one bright side of Plurk is that there is a growing community who is more than willing to help each other. They have also begun threads to allow friends to find each other on other micro-blogging and social networks. The Plurk interface makes this a little easier to accomplish than Twitter. Both of these sites are invaluable if you are looking for information or to try and keep up with friends.