Archive for category social networks
Twestival and social media for social good
Posted by Julie Delaforce in social media, social networks on 25 March, 2010
There are many cynics who will say that we live in a hyper-connected world and its actually over-complicating our lives, rather than simplifying them. They say social networking keeps us at home in front of the computer and encourages anti-social behaviour. Some even think that there are too many brands just pushing their advertising messages in social media. Hopefully charity events such as this week’s second annual Twestival will go some way to muting these critics.
On March 25th, more than 175 cities will participate in Twestival, a global charity event. According to the Twestival website:
“Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.”
At the time of publishing, Twestival had raised over $200,000 for Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organisation that provides access to education for poor children.
Mashable.com suggests five ways you can get involved in Twestival:
- Attend a Twestival event
- Donate online
- Bid on the Twestival eBay auction
- Tweet your support
- Listen to Twestival FM.
Can’t get involved in Twestival, but still interested in how you can do good via social media? There are many other ways you can get involved. It’s no accident that charities are beginning to make their mark in social media, it’s all about community and helping one another, so the two go hand-in-hand.
Charity: Water is one organisation who are making an impact. They do the simple things right: they’re on Facebook and Twitter to bring attention to their cause and encourage viral sharing and word-of-mouth, they have a website with rich content: counters showing how much has been raised for particular projects.
Sometimes its hard for us to relate to big, international causes. Think about how social media has helped during natural disasters, such as the Victorian Bushfires in 2009. Photos and videos were shared on UGC sites which brought attention to the disaster and lead to people mobilising on Twitter to share links to charity donation information. Many showed their support for the victims by joining Facebook groups.
So now you’re inspired to do good, but don’t know where to start? It’s easy for anyone to get involved. Here are some tips on what you can do to help humanity online:
- Update your Facebook or Twitter status about a cause to let your friends know about it, don’t forget to include a link to the site of your chosen cause
- Show your support to a multitude of charities by signing up to the Causes application on Facebook
- Create a Chip-In counter and ask friends to donate to your favourite cause
- Sign up to Yahoo! for Good and add a badge for your favourite cause to your website, social network profile or blog
Showing support for a good cause has been made much easier with social media tools and applications. Now there’s nothing from being able to do more to help.
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Facebook: why can’t apps give more information before you hit ‘allow’?
Posted by Julie Delaforce in social games, social networks, user experience on 15 December, 2009
The answer is: they can! I haven’t seen it on many apps, only one in fact, Treasure Madness.
I’m sure many of you, like me, are reluctant to click through on the ‘allow’ button before knowing what a Facebook application is all about. There is rarely enough information on the application page to let you know exactly what the game /application involves, if you need friends using the app to make it effective and the many other factors you might consider.
Treasure Madness addresses this issue by showing the user a simple introduction to the game and what’s involved in two well-laid-out pages. After viewing these pages, the user then has the option to ‘play now’. It’s at this point the user sees the ‘allow’ screen. In my book, this gets the app a big thumbs up in terms of user experience as it greatly decreases the barrier to entry other Facebook app I’ve seen has.
Well done, Treasure Madness!
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Facebook privacy and the social network fear factor
Posted by Julie Delaforce in social networks on 2 February, 2009
I’m the first to admit I’m totally addicted to social networks and online communities, when I talk to friends and family about my online involvement, they often worry that I have such a heavy online presence that anyone can discover all my dirty little secrets (not that I have any, of course). My mum told me a story of a friend’s daughter who didn’t get a job she applied for because the prospective employer did a search for her online and found her Facebook profile, which contained details they weren’t happy with (i.e. photos of her partying, when she was applying for a teaching position).
The fact is, these are unneccessary fears, most social networks have very comprehensive security and privacy settings. I’d like to use Facebook as an example of the security you can apply to your online presence.
Firstly, in regards to the story above the easiest way to keep your profile private is to ensure that your privacy settings restrict who can view your profile. The options include: My Networks & Friends, Friends of Friends and Only Friends. If you’re a member of the ‘Australia’ Network and you choose the My Networks & Friends options, there are 2.5 millions Australians who can see your whole profile. You can also choose whether or not you’d like your profile to appear in public searches (eg. Google).
It’s also important to check the settings for photos and videos when managing your profile, for example, do you want everyone to be able to see any photos or videos tagged of you? If not, change the settings. When creating photo albums on Facebook, the automatic privacy setting is ‘Everyone’ this doesn’t just mean all of your friends, it means EVERYONE on Facebook. I always change the setting to Only Friends so that only people I know have access to my photos.
Facebook has the option of creating Friends groups, so you can choose to have a ‘personal’ and ‘work’ group and limit what information is available to your colleagues. For example, you can restrict colleagues from being able to read your wall posts and seeing your photos.
There are endless privacy and security settings on Facebook, and all other social networks and online communities. As you add information to your profile think about who that information is available to and ensure your privacy is protected.
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