Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do by Zennie Abraham

This Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do blog post is an update of an older post from 2009. It contains some refinements in an approach that's worked very well for this blogger.

My friends come to me for advice in this area all the time, so I created this "Top 10" list of actions to take in using social networks to get yourself noticed online. (I'm going to add to this later, with more detail but watch the video for more background.)

The objective here is not just to get yourself noticed, but to also protect your identity.  By being everywhere, and with the same name and photo, you create your "look" such that it's harder for anyone else to not only pretend to be you, but to alter your online persona.   In other words,  by having your name already online, it guards against and overwhelms any other view of you that's posted online.   To do this, you have to be on as many platforms as possible.

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do

1.Figure out your name. (I’m Zennie Abraham, Zenophon Abraham and Zennie62)
2.What do you want to get out of this? (Business? pleasure? Information? If you’re in the business of pleasure that’s another story.)
3.Figure out your title: CEO? Producer? Party Animal?
4.Develop an email list. Remember, email is still a form of social networking.
5.Find a photo you’re proud of and nothing with you wearing a gorilla suit. (It does work for some but I don’t recommend it.)

6.Business?
a.Join Linkedin
b.Join Ryze (Great small business membership base in the Bay Area.)
c.Join Plaxo
d.Join Facebook and turn off the relationship notifications. (We don't need

know that you're dating Sven Nordgarden.
e. Join H5
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com


7.Pleasure?
a.Join MySpace
b.Join Facebook
c.Join FriendFeed
d. Join Brightkite.com
e. Join Foursquare.com
f. Join YouTube.com


8.Information?
a.Join FriendFeed
b.Join Facebook
c.Join Technorati (I recommend creating a blog and then posting it as your website of choice in their system.)
d. If sports-related, join MakeitPro.com 
e. Join Brightkite.com
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com

Now some of you may find the inclusion of YouTube confusing, but it's a social network, not just a video distribution site. Moreover, it's a powerful identify-protection tool for this purpose, so long as you use your name and don't call yourself "Ardvark".

9.Set up a blog – put your resume in it without your phone number. That’s your free website. I prefer Blogger.com. It’s free. Make the blog title your name. Why? To mark your place with your name on cyberspace. Link to it from your social network profile. The point is to begin to protect your name and identity by having something out there you made about you, not someone else.

10.Use your email signature as the place for your links to your Linkedin Page and Blog page. (Now you have two places pointing at your blog page, which helps with SEO and to have others see your resume.)

A word on Twitter.

Twitter is not a social network, it's a communications system and you need to have something to say to use it. It's volume-based; the more you post the more valued your account because people will follow you looking for interesting posts, or what are called "tweets". I think of Twitter as an accessory to a social network not a replacement for one.

Twitter is very misunderstood by people in business. To continue my current favorite organization to pick on, just because it needs to improve, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) does not have a Twitter account.  How could a Twitter account - and a blog - benefit AMPAS?  I'll demonstrated via this scenario:

The Academy makes a mistake and leaves out Farrah Fawcett from its Memorial Tribute portion of the 2010 Oscars.  To deal with the negative press it does the following:

1) Issues an apology on the AMPAS blog, which because it's connected to the AMPAS Twitter account, also goes out to AMPAS Twitter followers, and because the AMPAS Twitter account is connected to AMPAS on Facebook, it's posted to Facebook too.

2) AMPAS issues a press release based on the blog contents.

3) AMPAS asks its Twitter followers (hopefully over 1 million) to retweet the initial message.

4) AMPAS then makes a video-embeded blog post that's a "Tribute to Farrah Fawcett" and then does one blog post for each of the other actors that were missing.  That too goes out via Twitter, one for each performer, and it goes to Facebook.

What will happen is each AMPAS blog post link is heightened by the click rates that will happen from being part of a tweet.  That will raise the blog post pages in a search for "Farrah Fawcett and Academy" and thus more people will see the AMPAS apology and the online tribute.

End result: message is efficiently sent and the online tracks are seeded with tributes so that as the issue dies down, a track record that the Academy did something is in place.

Zennie62 On Twitter - Connect With Me!

Hey everyone, I'm on Twitter!  Sign up and add me to your connections list!  Just click here on my profile:


http://twitter.com/zennie62



And then click "Follow" to follow me, and I will follow you.  This way, I can send you links to my latest videos and blog content, and vice versa. 

Twitter,Hot News Feed, Pownce, New World Of Intimacy

Hot News Feed, Twitter and other forms of incessant online contact have created a brave new world of ambient intimacy by allowing instant communications and connectivity.

read more | digg story

Sports Business Simulations Turns Five Years Old

In 2002, a former aide to The Mayor of Oakland met the head of the University of San Francisco Sport Management department to discuss stadium financing, and the need for a new stadium for the Oakland Baseball. In that meeting, USF Professor Dr. Dan Rascher, PhD, took note of Zenophon "Zennie" Abraham’s web-based simulation game The XFL Simworld, and said "I need that for my class."

When Mr. Abraham finished his second simulator in late October 2002, the Oakland Baseball Simworld, he met again with Mr. Rascher, and Sports Business Simulations (SBS) was born. On January 24th of 2003, SBS became a Delaware Corporation, with seed capital, and based in Oakland.

Now, SBS is about to turn five-years-old.

SBS is the first company who's products are built around the Forio Macro Language (FML) programming language developed by San Francisco-based Forio Business Simulations. "Forio's partners, Michael Bean and Will Glass have been our friends and advisers over the last five years," said Zenophon "Zennie" Abraham, SBS's Co-Founder and CEO.

Abraham says that SBS is an entity unique to the San Francisco Bay Area. "I mean only here can one easily meet people who have the resources, talent, and skill to start an online business like this. The Bay Area culture made SBS possible."

Sports Business Simulation's charge is to build online business Simulations of sports teams and leagues for use in the classroom. For just $15, a student has unlimited use of SBS' simulators for an entire class semester or quarter. SBS products are not designed to replace textbooks, they are developed to enhance the classroom experience.

SBS has two simulators: the XFL Simworld and the Oakland Baseball Simworld, but has plans to add a new simulator based around the fitness industry in one month.

The SBS website itself has expanded dramatically during its five years of growth. In 2003, there were just the simulations. Now, the "sims" as they're called are joined by a network of over 40 blogs, over 100 message boards, a Facebook-style social network, video shows, and pages with links to the offerings of affilate partners, like StubHub.com," said Abraham.

SBS now has an online marketing division because Abraham said too many of his friends wanted articles and videos for their business. "It got so bad I started what we call "SBS-ON" at http://sbson.com. We now have clients in the transportation and real estate industries and are looking to expand. It actually helps us promote our sims."

The SBS sims have been used by many high schools and colleges in America. The Oakland Baseball Simworld has been the focus of numerous academic papers. "What's happened over five years is that the Oakland Sim has developed a kind of cult following. It's a complex online game with over 100 decisions and asks one to run a numerical copy of the behavior of the Oakland Athletics Baseball Organization. It's kind of a sports business fantasy game."


For more information:

510-387-9809
http://www.sportsbusinesssims.com

Julia Allison and Meghan Asha Search For White Tech Guys at TechCrunch

Ok. You're wondering what's up with the title's smarky angle "Julia Allison and Meghan Asha Search For White Tech Guys at TechCrunch"? Well, it's simple. It's true.

If you've ever been to an SF Bay Area tech event as a Black male, you discover five things:

1) The party's mostly white
2) The men are cool to talk with
3) The women there act like they're afraid to talk with you if you're Black.

And establish these rules...

1) You have a better time if you just hang with one group and don't mingle much.
2) You have a fantastic time if you don't wait for people to talk to you, and totally avoid anyone
-- including some women -- who seem to have an issue with your presence.

I'm serious about this.

As the video reveals, of all of the people at these parties, it's generally non-tech White Women that generally act like they're looking only for White and at times Asian tech guys, as opposed to just plain networking. (And by "non-tech" I mean those who are not in tech positions. There are some exceptions if you read on, but that's my general experience. Julia, for example, is not herself a programmer or videoblogger or game developer, or web designer.) And their focus is so hard on this type of guy that they most of them will not do the normal act of simple networking with manners. By contrast, the guys act, well, normal. I've got to be honest about this. Hey, when you're one of , say, three Black men out of 300 people you see a different side of society at these events.

And before you go there, I didn't learn this by trying to establish a conversation, but more by simply noticing patterns -- where people went to at these parties and mostly who they took the time to strike up a conversation with, and also seeing how other Black men were treated, and quickly establishing the set of ground rules you see above and moving forward.

Hey, someone's got to point this out; might as well be me because the rules you see above have become habit for me. It's hilarious. For example, I remember the founder of a certain "scrapping" website app that ryhmes with "Scrabble" just pass and brush against me ( and with her chest, folks. Her chest!) without even saying so much as "excuse me" or "how's it going?" -- terrible behavior which I took as a weird form of passive-agresssive flirting or a rude "I don't want to see you" brush off and said nothing to her.

Folks like her are what makes the World a little less cool and a lot more hurtful. I just wish they'd realize how inappropriate they're being, but that may be asking too much. A simple "Hello" will do in the future.

I can report there was one woman at these events that was really cool and normal, and she knows who she is. Maybe there will be more like her, and less like the Julia Allisons.

Not that I've met Julia Allison. I may be wrong about her, but my experience tells me otherwise. I'd bet the ranch I'm right. But I can't lose. If I'm right, then my World is easier for noting the problem, if I'm wrong, then she's not what is the norm and that's good, and if I'm right and she's sensitive to this, she'll change, and we'll all be better.

I just want to attend one Tech party where everyone's cool. I know that party's out there, somewhere.

(Oh. And if you're one of those who's going to stupidly remark about this and claim that -- for example -- I'm racist for pointing out racism, be smart enough to realize that if people stopped behaving in the patterns I identify, I'd have to reason to complain or dish. Think about it. What I'm sharing with you is conversation that Blacks generally reserve for Black-on-Black environments. I dont' do that. I'll let you know what's on my mind, period. Also, stating that a person's racist for identifying racism is like saying one person's a robber for identiying a robbery.)

Racism's Alarming Spread On YouTube

This video below shows on YouTubers concern over the rampant spread of racism on YouTube. It comes out in comments on certain videos and is so prevanlent one has to ask if YouTube is safe. I personally think so, but I do think this issue should be adressed before a crisis sets in.



And this is another video expressing concern.



We need a reminder that racism is mental illness and should not be tolerated or spread on any medium like YouTube.

Twitter - Born In San Francisco

OK. Just when I thought the Bay Area was starting to lose it's dominance in all things online, we have Twitter , which grew out of the South Park area of The City, near AT&T Park, where the SF Giants play ball.

As to what Twitter is, to me it's a massive fad idea that's so simple I wish I'd thought of it. It's place to tell the World what you're doing. Period. That's all. Or as one Twitter employee put it "it's just a medium, and its relative worth lies in what's communicated."

Yep.

Twitter is a product of Obvious corporation, which reports that it's charge is to to create interesting things that matter to the world—and a great place for creative, smart people to work.

Nice.

Twitter's an interesting online social network that's all too perfectly viral. It makes me wonder what's next. My current charge is to figure out how better to mate our simulations with our blogs and message boards. I'll figure it out.