Jason Lee Overbey (HeyOverbey!)

I’m a Droid man. My tablet, phone and laptop are pimped out with Droid. Almost daily I search for not just the latest, but coolest, apps. In my searching this week, I came across some really cool websites related to social media. Here I was looking for apps and ran into a lot of web sites. I thought you might want a press, too…

1 - TweetCongress.org Most of you on social media, I have noticed, are also active politically. Punch in your zip code here and get your local representative’s Twitter and contact info… and more. 

2 - Jackalopejobs.com Can this be any cooler? Here you search for jobs and then jackalope finds people in your social media networks that already work where you want to apply… to hook you up quicker! Amazing. This is one of my favs.

3 - TwitterCounter Most of us have heard of Tweetreach.com and I love that tool. TwitterCounter is pretty much the same but with more info and projections. I love Twitter analytics… and if you do, too, you will want to add this to your arsenal. 

4 - Socialbakers.com Get insight on popular brands and places. Also features social media stats for more than just Twitter… includes Google+.

5 - Social Media Cheat Sheet An article posted on Mashable by Ann Smarty (@seosmarty - she’s pretty nifty), this post on social media cheat sheets is a must have. Ever wonder how people post in bold and italics on Google+? Check this out. And, whoa, a lot more! 

6 - stock.xchng The leading FREE stock photo site. Share photos. Find photos to use. Hello! Awesome. 

7 - PostPost.com ”Dive into your Twitter timeline without drowning in it.” This site toplines content from the people you follow on Twitter. It is a personal Twitter search engine. 

8 - Facebook Calendar This article on socialmediatoday.com by @AllisonnTweets shows you how to make the most of facebook’s new calendar. You’ll use it! And, uh, follow Allison now, too! Yep.

9 - timehop.com What were you doing one year ago in social media? You’ll find out here. 

10 - Amplicate.com Find out what brands people love and hate on social media. This site “collects consumer opinions posted on social media, analyzes and compares them to let you know what consumers are saying about products, services, companies and sectors right now on Twitter and Facebook.”

11- HeyOverbey’s Facebook Page How’d that slip in here? Oh, well. Like me on facebook for sweet tips, articles and news in the social media world. I promise I won’t crowd up your timeline! 

12 - And, finally, here are 3 social media news sites - apart from those really big guys - that I source a great deal of usable information out of! socialtimes.com and socialfresh.com and thefuturebuzz.com. 

Give me a holler… JLOverbey@gmail.com and @HeyOverbey

“We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”  - Anne Lamott Bird by Bird

I’m a bit of a contemplative, to be sure. I’m reading the book Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think edited by John Brockman (@edge). It is a collection of 150 essays by today’s leading thinkers in technology, art and science. And it got the old noggin to ponder about the uniquely human act of writing. Not communicating. Any old plant or insect does that. But writing.

It occurred to me how ancient writing is. People who study such things claim that even prior to spoken language the prehistoric human felt driven to express herself by drawing on the cave wall. To communicate… through writing… is truly a primal force that compels us.

I would then say that when we write, we are drawing on something deep within us that predates the pen and paper. Something very, very old. It predates even the necessity to communicate through the written word. It’s strange. It excites me.

It makes me think it has its rudiments somewhere deep in the code of DNA then. To the spiritual among us, they would claim that it is a God-authored drive. I kind of like the romance of that notion. The more prosaic in our ranks would argue that it is an emergent property that developed as tribes solidified and chores were assigned allowing us more free time to create and express. Still others would say it is an overdetermined phenomenon and probably has multiple factors involving its arrival in the human psyche. I simply don’t know. And past the fact that it is an ancient scenario, my pontifications on the reasons and the modality fail me. I can’t figure it all out. 

But what I do know: It’s there. It is in all of us. We want to write. From crayons to keyboards, the proclivity stays with us our whole lives.

Sure, a select and esoteric few are genius at it. Most of us fall in the skill level of writing that the average population does with math - we know a little more than enough to balance our check books and get the taxes done. I suspect, though, we could do a lot better if  we wanted  to. All primitive tribes have language. There are a few that have no more than two words for math, however. It seems that to count was not as important to survival - to being human - as to communicate and to write. I can relate. I would much rather write in my spare time than do calculus.

So I started wondering. In the age where social media ubiquity offers the unprecedented forum to write and to have people read it - why aren’t more people writing? Oh sure, they post about lunch. They post cute pictures with cats. They even let you know when they entered or exited a relationship (something I would never post about but absolutely love reading from others). But, surely, more of them ought to be blogging. Right? I mean in paragraphs. You know the sort of thing: a topic sentence, middle progression, and a cogent end bringing it all together for the reader.

Ah. I just dismissed it as fear. Laziness. Or maybe people are too busy.

But something nagged at me telling me there is more. Everyone has hobbies, interests and opinions. I know they can articulate them - they do every day at Starbucks. And then, right in the middle of my caramel frothy thing,  I heard someone say, “Yeah, but no one wants to hear what I have to say.”

Now that is an entirely different objection to writing from fear, skill or accessibility to audience. That’s about relevance.

People who say that no one wants to hear what they have to say often make the declaration with such authority that I often wonder how they obtained such absolute, god-like knowledge. You mean no one - at all - wants to hear anything - at all - about your story? At all? Wow. How’d you find that out?

I am thinking the average person feels like there are too many people crowded in the cave. And who wants to see one more pictograph of a man slaying a deer in the forest!

Ah ha!

So… whatever you feel about the subject of writing… you still have that thought to do it, don’t you? It may not be with you like a sickness. Like the “ick” that all adored writers through the ages declared they had to surrender to or face insanity. You may not have it like that. But to write is there. It may only feel like a shoe that doesn’t fit quite right. You can still walk just fine. You get through the day. But you are aware of its presence, its almost quiet ache nonetheless.

Arguing with your inner writer only leaves you exhausted and angry. Quit fighting.

I want to tell you today that I still want to see your drawing on the wall. I am convinced that being in the lineage of the ancient man with the same desire, you too, have returned from the hunt with a story to tell. I’ll even go to your cave to learn about it.

You may not be able to draw your story with the detail or shadowing of some. But should that alone prohibit you from taking up the pen? No one else can write your story for you. Not really. While the plots may vary but little, the voice of every storyteller is different. Always.

I want to hear about your journey. I do. I am a bit of a nosey quidnunc… fine. But I know others who want to hear you as well.

It is a human and ancient thing to sit alone somewhere and read the thoughts of another from a page. It wakes me up. It gets me thinking. At times it makes me outraged. I laugh. I remember. It takes me to new places. I can’t always determine whose words it will be that do all that for me.

So don’t just write for yourself. Write for me. Write for all of humankind.  

I love politics. I love world news. It excites me. I’m a bit of a quidnunc though. I also am enamored of social media and where it will go next. 

With that in mind, I have compiled a couple interesting links here for you to review regarding how government and world leaders are using social media:

1 - World leaders to get their own social network. Click here to read how “Tibco Software is expected to announce the launch of TopCom, a hyper-secure social network and video-messaging service that will be made accessible only to the top 200 members of the World Economic Forum”.

2 - The CIA now tracks social media for intelligence gathering. Click here to read how the CIA calls the information open source material and has a designated Open Source Center to track posts, hashtags, blogs and the like. 

3 - Twitter is blocked in China. But click here to read how “a number of Chinese dissidents have already left homegrown social media sites, choosing to create a community on Twitter that is beyond the reach of government censorship” and are getting past the firewall. 

4 -Government & Social Media Wiki page. Click here to read how “Josh Shpayher aims to help Congress, elected officials and their staffs from the Hill and around the country and the world, the media, and the public at large track who in government uses which forms of Social Media”. This is a powerful tool to track a  politician’s social media use.  

5 - Citizens can use social media to sway local government. I really liked these 7 ways the populous can use social media to impact their government from www.ohmygov.com

6 - Federal Government Guidelines for Staff Use of Social Media. Click here to read how “The rules lay out how bureaucrats should use public social networks to communicate with citizens and with each other, be it via sites like Facebook or those which allow multiple users to create and share information online”. 

7 - How New York City Government Is (and Isn’t) Using Social Media. A panel discussion by City Hall on incorporating social media in NYC. Click here. 

8 - How Twitter Helped the White House. Click here to read how the White House chose its latest hashtag on the economy that ended up trending worldwide within 45 minutes.

9 - The United Nations pushes NGOs (non-governmental agencies) to use social media to fight poverty. Click here to read how “The Division for Social Policy and Development (DSPD) organized a Panel Discussion on “How NGOs can use social media to create impact and eradicate poverty”, which took place on Friday 20 January 2012 from 1:15pm to 2:45pm in conference room 6 at the United Nations North Lawn Building (NLB)”.

I would be honored if you had some links to share with me! 

@HeyOverbey

JLOverbey@gmail.com 

“Writers will happen [even] in the best of families.” Rita Mae Brown

Love it. Rita is making the point that a true writer - the one with the ick - has to write. Born that way. There isn’t a choice in the equation. Fundamentally, I write because I have to. I write to stay sane - or to get and stay sane. This compulsion, this obsession to communicate through the written word, is more than an illness like, say diabetes, that can be treated. The only way to treat this ick is to surrender to it. So it reminds me that…

“Writing involves a commitment greater than illness.” Bernard Malamud

Still, since I have to do it anyway, someone else might as well read the stuff, right? Ultimately…

“One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others’ minds.”  Alfred Kazin

Sure… we hear every hour new tips and tricks to maximize the circulation of our musings. Trying to avoid redundancy,  I offer these ideas as well: 

+ Use Twitter. Daily! Seems obvious but I am still a little surprised by how many people do not have a twitter account today. And those who do are not using it to its full potential. Create a pithy, pointed profile. Google uses keywords from your Twitter bio to help determine how you appear in search results. Use a clear pic. Follow a lot of like-minded, but quality people, and tweet relevant information. In between that promote the URL for your blog. Don’t forget to show a little personality in your feed or, I feel, it comes across robotic and dry. And pay attention - there are a lot of articles out there about how to maximize your twitter experience. One last quick tip for writing bloggers: follow the hashtag #amwriting. It is a great group of writers supporting each other. Okay, one more… suck up. ReTweet, mention, favorite people’s tweets (they will get that email from Twitter and see your name).

+ Use networkedblogs on facebook. It is a great way to follow quality blogs you like while promoting your own. You can also “syndicate” your blog(s) and choose publishing options.

+ Sign up for stumbleupon. After two or three of your pages getting submitted and “liked” by other stumbleupon members your presence increases and you are suggested to other users. Also, “thumbsup” your own pages. Kinda like voting for yourself on election day if you were running for office - it just makes sense.

+ Use Reddit and Digg, too. (But you already know about these… I’m cutting back on the redundancy)

+ Use www.problogger.net. There is a lot of good information on this site: articles, links, interviews, SEO optimization, tips.

+ Look into and use www.blogcarnival.com… ”where someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts all those posts together in a blog post called a carnival… Carnivals come in edited “editions”, just like magazines or journals. The fact that carnivals are edited (and usually annotated) collections of links lets them serve as “magazines” within the blogosphere, and carnival hosts can earn their readership by providing high quality collections.”

+ Comment on other blogs. Scour the internet for like-minded bloggers. Go to expert’s pages/blogs. Find good, relevant conversations and add quality comment to the feed. This gets you exposure and if you are good it gets people asking who you are. Many times you have to fill out a profile before you can comment and that creates a blurb and linkback to your blog.

+ Try www.blogrush.com. Another great blog syndication tool.

+ Have more than one blog. Try wordpress, tumblr, blogspot and others. Even if your content is exactly the same on each site, you are increasing your presence on the web so you are more likely to appear in internet search engines like yahoo and google.

+ Visit www.superbloggingtips.com. They have super blogging tips. Sorry.

+ Submit your articles to www.addyourblog.com. We are assuming it is good quality stuff - they do not tolerate spammers. Who would? Don’t spam, people. Why do we have to keep saying it!

+ Google+ Even if you are buying all the hype that G+ is about to kick the bucket, they still have the ubiquitous power to control search results. At least get a Google+ account as a placeholder and post your blog posting links there.

+ Join www.bebo.com and promote your writing there. You can sign in with facebook.

+ Newsdag. I like http://www.newsdag.com. You can create an account quickly and publish each of your blog posts separately. The people there want to be there and spend a lot of time reading and commenting on posts. Be sure to linkback, of course, to your blog site.

+ 12Most.com. Over the last year 12most.com has grown phenomenally. If you can punch out a high quality proposal to them, following their clear guest submission guidelines, your exposure will grow exponentially. 

+ My favorite! http://www.triberr.com is now open to the public. So far, joining far-reaching tribes on the platform will get your links more exposure through this one site than any other I have seen so far. There is a commitment factor inherent in the tribe that ensures your links get Tweeted by other members in the tribe. The tribe chiefs are brilliant at monitoring other people in the tribe to ensure they are regularly approving your posts to be Tweeted and that quality content is being streamed for you to post in kind.

If you are a pro, you have heard most of these… thanks for bearing with us! Maybe some have helped. If you are new, you cannot afford to blog without checking into most of these supports.

No matter what, do not stop writing. In your journal, on bits of scrap paper, on a card you may or may not send to a good pal… WRITE! You have a story, a message, a voice - and we need to hear it.

Connect with me on twitter @HeyOverbey and email me: JLOverbey@gmail.com

Twitter is ablaze with news about Klout’s new influence calculating algorithms. A new spoof account, @OccupyKlout has even arisen.  Mostly the talk has been about people’s own personal “Klout Score” going down in… “value”.

Now do not misunderstand me, please - I enjoy Klout and I visit their site almost every day. I give away +K (and even have some available now to donate to those of you who are in need of a boost). Klout, like empireavenue, et al, is not a game, however. It can actually be used as a great tool. And with their improvements I am sure it will only grow more in its utility.

But as a social media obsessed community we need to be very clear on exactly what the Klout tool is and what it measures.

I am here to announce today that Klout does not measure influence. Of any kind or scope.

Authentic influence is effected on someone when the person who is influenced is moved to TAKE ACTION based on the influencer’s behavior or content.

Anything less that occurs is merely inspiration, or at best, engagement.

All that Klout can really do - and this is great - is measure true engagement.

If I draft a Tweet and send it out - and it is embedded with predetermined Klout Topic keywords - and many people Retweet me or reply to me, Klout calculates that in the determination of my influence score.

All they have truly measured though is words and engagement. They have not - and I argue cannot - measure my influence over you. They have no algorithm in place that can quantify how and in what capacity I have driven you TO ACT. They cannot weigh out how many of you called to meet with me, asked for direction or bought a product of mine (order now!).

Consider this: I spearhead a new committee designed to raise funds so that lesbians worldwide will finally be fitted into jeans that are flattering. I put a lot of work into this and create a buzz, generate publicity and prepare an event. Hundreds of people show up and I give a stirring speech replete with slides and visuals of the wonder jean for lesbians that cultures worldwide can incorporate. At the end I give a call to action… to carry the message into your own communities and to, most of all, each give $200 - tonight!

If, as a result of my content and persuasion, you fork over the dollars or organize a local LIFJ (Lesbians-In-Flattering-Jeans) chapter - then I have genuinely influenced you. I have driven you to action. My group could measure that.  Klout could then say I have lesbian influence. Or fundraising influence. Or activism influence. Or maybe even fashion, though my close friends would disagree.

But if you only meet with me afterward to further discuss the greater existential questions surrounding lesbian outerwear, or, to praise me or agree with me (ReTweet) then I have only managed to ENGAGE you or perhaps inspire you. 

And that is wonderful. Because an engagement could hook you. I may have inspired you to think more and to come back. But I have not produced true, even more to the point, measurable influence over you.

For now Klout measures engagement based on your words. I love that - so long as we are clear that’s what it is. 

I would also contend that they do not even measure social media influence as all social media is a platform to connect people outside of the medium.

To pretend Klout can quantify influence - social or otherwise - is, like blondes and other things,  a distraction.

JLOverbey@gmail.com

Twitter: @HeyOverbey  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Might Google get in trouble for placing their own websites 1st in results in user queries on related topics? Is it “wrong” if they do? http://on.wsj.com/ngKWN9

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Google: “When possible, we notify users about requests for user data [and their search histories] that may affect them” http://reg.cx/1PJE  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: From July to December of 2010 Google received 4,601 demands from US-based agencies for information relating to users http://reg.cx/1PJE  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Google turns over user data in 94% of US demands. http://reg.cx/1PJE  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: As of 2009 Google claimed 2 Billion searches per day. Every single one of which are stored completely.

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Under Patriot Act intelligence agencies can access ur individual Google search queries that havnt been anonymized w/out oversight of a judge    

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: It then behooves us to remember that there is no such thing as a pure Google search query. All searches on Google produce “biased” results.  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: In this way Google exercises a great deal of power over what information from the web is presented to us ea time we search. It is tailored.  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: We can sit side-by-side & enter exact same query into Google search & we will get different individualized results based on our past queries    

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Although after 18mos Google anonymizes your search queries & they dont link directly to you there’s still a traceable profile of ur searches  

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: Google privacy policy states after 18mos your traceable search queries are “anonymized” or not linked to you individually tho still stored      

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey: Your queries entered in Google search engine being traceable to u is not protected under 4th Amend Search/Seizure b/c Google is a 3rd party    

HeyOverbey Jason Lee Overbey: If you are not signed in to Google’s services every query you enter into their search engine is still traceable back to your IP address    

HeyOverbey  Jason Lee Overbey: If you are “signed in” then every query you enter into Google’s search engine is traceable back to you individually

HeyOverbey  Jason Lee Overbey: Google has a record of every query ever entered into their search engine since their days at Stanford University.

My latest tweets on a few search tips. Try ‘em out. Email me at JLOverbey@gmail.com for more! And… follow me on Twitter @HeyOverbey

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Choose your words carefully. Google uses the words in your bio on Twitter to determine how you appear in google search results! #tips #tweet

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tips: Try out Google Trends. See what the latest keywords and searches are hot. Great graphs. You can narrow by year, too.

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Build a base around your expertise… Occasionally go to search.twitter.com. Enter common questions in ur field & answer them in replies.

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tip: Excellent way to ask a question is have google fill in blank by adding (*) at part unknown (Linkedin went live on *)

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tip: Use two dots (..) between any number range to get a series of results in a range on google. (eg Wal-mart CEO 1980..1990)

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tips: Have a phone number but don’t know who it is or need more info? Use: phonebook: 513-344-3829. Also try it w/out dashes.

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tips: Want only a person’s pics to show in google image search & not related pics? Add “&imgtype=face” to end of your search

HeyOverbeyJason Lee Overbey Google Search Tips: Enter any live flight in google search box to get real-time flight update and track status (eg DELTA FLIGHT 1441)