Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with socialnetworking

Is there an application that will map all my friends?

yankeh — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:34:59 -0800

I'm looking for an online or freeware map application that allows me to chart where I know people across the globe. This would serve the same purpose as a paper map on the wall with pins in it but would have more flexibility (zoom-in, link to info about the place etc.) If, for example, I were planning a trip to Thailand, I could open the map app and see that I have a couple acquaintances there and where exactly they live. Even better if it will link up with my address book and/or facebook and do some of the data input work for me.

Why Should You Use Social Networking at Work?

Jaybo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:06:47 -0800

Many workplaces ban social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on. What are some of the reasons workplaces should allow (and even encourage) staff to use social networking sites? I'm particularly interested in the case you would make to someone in the healthcare field but examples that are applicable to other areas, especially those that may ban social networking site for privacy or productivity reasons, are welcome as well.

How does Facebook generate the list of friend icons on the left side of my profile screen?

jason's_planet — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:42:21 -0800

How does Facebook generate the list of friend icons on the left side of my profile screen? How does it decide which ones to display? Does it pick people who've visited my profile lately? Or people whose profiles I've visited? Does it try to mix up people from a variety of groups -- these ones from high school, these from that online group, a certain amount of men, a certain amount of women? I have a hard time believing that the process is entirely random because I've noticed some friend icons appear only at certain points during the week and never appearing during other times of the week.

So what's the deal?

Help me make my friend love twitter.

superbird — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:32:43 -0800

What sort of guidelines should I provide for a friend for a crash course in social networking? My friend and I are doing an experiment where we give up the thing we love most (for me: video games; for him: books) for a week and indulge in something we don't appreciate very much (for me: books; for him: social networking).

We're laying out ground rules for one another that are designed to both stretch us and help us to appreciate the medium. So, for my friend: what are some good guidelines I can propose to help my friend understand and appreciate facebook and twitter for a week.

Yes, I know a week is not quite enough time to really have him get it, but that's what we have. And there are no rules against doing preparatory work before the week starts. So, be creative and provide me a bunch of guidelines I can give him to make him love facebook and twitter!

No! Not my Gmail and Facebook! How to convince work not to block?

raf — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:33:26 -0800

Work is thinking about banning access to Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail and other third-party email and social networking sites. Help me convince them not to? My employer (a law firm) is very close to blocking access to third-party email and social networking sites, purportedly because such sites are conduits for "viruses." I would like to convince them this is a very bad idea, for a variety of reasons: (1) it's unnecessary, since there is no actual virus problem from such sites; (2) it's counterproductive, since it will block various legitimate work-related uses and will prevent people from keeping up with family and personal issues; and (3) it's insulting and childish.

Are there other arguments I should be making? Do you have citations or references that would help?

Thanks!

What books would teach me about information and data?

Deathalicious — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:58:24 -0800

Let's say I wanted to educate myself to sort-of the equivalent of a Bachelor's Degree in Information and Data (not sure what the real degree would be called, but you get the idea). What should be in my syllabus? Areas of study would include things like informational networks and social networking, tacit and explicit knowledge, parsing and data extraction, data mining, visualization, metadata, information retrieval and storage, plus other things that I'm probably not even aware of. Websites are great, but so are books (maybe excluding $$$ textbooks if possible), podcasts, videos, source code, applications, etc. Assume a relatively high level of technical know-how (including coding skills) but little formal computer science training.

Social networking for a middle-aged beginner?

nja — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:31:36 -0800

I have a friend who is reasonably familiar with the commercial and news side of the web but is interested in using it for online social activities - I set her up on Facebook yesterday but I think what she's really looking for is a forum-based community where she can chat or discuss things with people in the evening after she has put the children to bed and she's on her own. Any suggestions? She has a husband so she's not looking for that sort of company, but he tends to go to bed long before she wants to as he is considerably older than her. She's in her late forties, works long hours at a stressful job and has two young boys who are fairly demanding, and wants to unwind at the end of the day with a glass of wine and some intelligent conversation. She has a PhD on a particular Victorian author, but when I showed her the Facebook communities related to her subject she wasn't impressed. I tend to drift around dipping in and out of blogs, and use LiveJournal quite a lot, but I think she's looking for something a little more focussed to dip her toe in the water, somewhere where she's going to find people of a similar age and educational background with similar interests (travel, art, literature).

How should my college (i.e., workplace) social network?

faunafrailty — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:27:26 -0800

Which university/college sites are doing social networking right? Which networks should colleges be involved with other than Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? I work for a liberal arts college and am trying to assess what social networking sites we should be involved with. We're on Facebook and Twitter. YouTube is coming. I joined Myspace, just to make sure we got our name, rather than to really do much with the page.

Am I forgetting any important sites? What about Flickr? Do you think prospective/current/alumni students care about us posting photos on there, in addition to posting photos on our own site and on Facebook?

The goal is to connect with both prospective students and alumni.

If you know of any colleges and universities that are doing social networking really well, can you share those, plus your opinions on the above questions? Thanks!!

Ning: What's it good for?

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:00:47 -0800

Ning: What's it good for? I've been asked to do some research for work, mainly into social networking for our company (hence the anonyme). One site that management has expressed an interest in is ning.com. I've looked at it in another situation for another group in the near past, but I'm running up against the same issue I had before, which is that I can't figure out what is so great about ning (which strikes me as roll-your-own facebook) as opposed to any other site you might network on (Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo). So, if you use ning, what do you use it for? What drew you there? What do you like about it?

Hey, Are We Related?

jrishel — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:25:28 -0800

with all this internet connectedness, I've met a few different people online (either through facebook, twitter or geni) who share my not-very-common last name, and we've tried to determine if we're related by relating some of the oldest relatives we know who share the surname, but usually we don't find any overlap. As a genealogical novice, what should my next steps be in trying to find out if we're actually distantly related or if some clerk at Ellis Island just liked to give a bunch of French/German immigrants the same last name? I've used Geni, and most every relative I have an email address has joined, and we've filled in as far back as everyone living can remember. Poking around at familysearch.org (which I learned about from a previous AskMeFi) I have been able to confirm some birth and death dates and locations, but I'm not sure where to go next. Do we just keep filling out our trees and hope for a match?

How do I get my links in Twitter to post to Delicious?

metalheart — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:31:59 -0800

Is there a way or tool to easily wed Twitter to Delicious, through sickness and in health? Preferably more health... I have been using Delicious since 2004 to save bookmarks, so I can access them anywhere. However, since the advent of Twitter, I find myself just posting links to it, in order to spread the word of something interesting, quickly. I still want to keep a copy for my "records," though.

How might I go about doing this, without having to essentially double post? Ideally, I would like some tool that detected when I posted a link in Twitter and automatically added it to Delicious, too, perhaps with the full tweet's text in the link description area. I'd like some solution for tagging, too, but I realize that may be asking for too much, really.

Does anything like this exist? I found out about twitticious, but it seems to have issues. That was also posted a year ago, so I'm hoping that there are some newer tools out that I'm not aware of. Help me, guys!

Looking for ideas for a presentation on Web 2.0 and new web apps for teachers

davey_darling — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:25:42 -0800

What should I include in a presentation about new internet technology and digital media in the classroom to a group of high school teachers? I have volunteered to run two different sessions at my schools PD day tomorrow. I have a general list of topics that I would like to cover, but I'm sure that there are others that I will forget.

I am looking to get people thinking about blogging in the classroom and incorporating things such as social networking (i.e. facebook, twitter) as well as the usefullness of such things as RSS feeds and readers, and photo/video sharing

The two workshops are described as follows:

First one: Web 2.0 and the "New" Internet

Participants will be introduced to a wide variety of new internet applications and technologies, and will engage in discussions around implementing them in a classroom setting. Workshop is hands-on, and participants will have the chance to experiment with the applications of their choice.

Second one: Digital Media in the classroom

Participants will work on various types of digital media and learn how to produce and deliver electronic content to their students. Topics may include but are not limited to: Digital Images and Video, Podcasting and Vodcasting, Blogging, Wikis and various social networking applications.

I am open to ideas on both the application side (i.e. show them this, do this) and the more philosophical side (i.e. this changes how we do this, why this is important)

The sessions are about 1.5 hours each. I will be in a computer lab with an LCD projector and every participant will have access to a computer.

Thanks. I will likely show them this question and any answers as an example of how user generated content has changed the internet.

Newspapers/social networking?

beagle — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:14:47 -0800

Can anyone point me to newspapers that have set up real social networks—not just registration, not just social media features like commenting or bookmarking, but real online communities where people post profiles, make connections, share news items, maybe form groups around news interests, and interact in other ways. The only ones I'm aware of are at the Bakersfield Californian, and TimesPeople at the NYTimes (which is still pretty rudimentary and in beta). Any others? Any experiences with newspaper social networks appreciated as well. Thanks.

Just how connected are we?

sabotagerabbit — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:26:18 -0800

I'm working on a short essay, and trying to get a general idea of how many hours per week the average person spends sending e-mails, talking on the phone, texting, etc. My google-fu is completely failing me (well, I'm finding some fairly incomplete data from about 2004, which is obviously not that useful), and I'd like to have something to back up my claim that we're spending more and more time "connected" each week. Any sources would be very helpful. Thanks!

Fill my room with the wonderful sound of tweets

l33tpolicywonk — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:51:44 -0800

What are some awesome Twitter feeds - cool people or information I need to know? I'm trying to get back into Twitter again, and want to follow some awesome Twitter feeds. I saw this thread, but I'm interested in people as well as cool uses by computers. I'm interested in religion, social sciences, lifehacking and intense ideas generally - anybody who's got genuinely interesting ideas or things to say about their day, I wanna hear about it.
(e.g. If there's a monk tweeting about the monastic life, I want to know. If there's a psychologist doing some sort of study that'd be really engaging to be a fly on the wall on, and he's tweeting, I want to know. If you've got a friend who you think leads a worthy, original, net-based life, I want to know).
guys.

Real-Life Social Networking Tools

ottereroticist — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 08:11:10 -0800

What online or iPhone-based tool can I use to send text messages to a bunch of people at once? A related but larger question: what online social networking tools can I use to help connect a community of not-very-geeky people who know each other in real life? I'm a community organizer who needs to stay in touch with a large and frequently changing group of people who live in my town. We have an e-mail list, but people don't seem to read/respond to it very much.

I want to be able to easily manage a list of around 100 phone numbers (starting from the Contacts in my iPhone) and easily send text messages to the whole list or any sublist.

Folks in my community range in age from 20 to 79 and are typically not very geeky. I think email isn't working partly because folks don't read their email very often, and partly because they get a lot of it and are overwhelmed by it.

One barrier to entry seems to be having to set up an account/profile, either due to usability issues or privacy concerns. We've been using Google technology to manage the email list and share documents, and a lot of people seem to get stuck at setting up a Google account.

Any recommendations for baby scrapbooking site?

k8t — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:30:03 -0800

Baby's online presence/scrapbook. Any recommendations for a site to keep family and friends informed while also archiving baby's early life? NYT had a story yesterday on different baby content management systems.

We'd want one that integrates with Flickr if possible, allows for photo and video uploads, and has privacy settings so only family and friends can view it. If it had RSS feeds or something so that we could do blog posts in Facebook that'd be cool too.

TotSpot looks to be the best right now, but any recommendations from MeFites would be welcome.

And yes, we know that we could do this with ease with a blog or Vox or whatever... but I imagine that some of these sites have cool features that wouldn't be available as a WordPress plug-in or something.

Because I Can't Write One Myself

DWRoelands — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:44:48 -0800

Help me find the website that will remind me how politically isolated I am among my peers.
In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, I found a really neat website. It had a map where you could locate yourself and list your political affiliation. You could invite other people to the site where they could do the same thing, and you could see them on the map and actually "play back" the sequence of signups so you could see how the meme spread. It would also show you some nice graphs as to the political makeup of the people in your social network.

I seem to remember the name being something like "TakeThePledge" or somesuch. Is it still around? Lost to history? Is there anything similar?

Moving Bookmarks between del.cio.us accounts

carterk — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:42:28 -0800

Simple del.icio.us question, followed by extensions. First, I have an account and an organization I'm helping to launch has an account. What's the easiest way to move bookmarks to this new account? This group of school librarians is going to be using del.icio.us, Shelfari and some other SN sites to do some collaboration and professional discourse. In your experience, when is it best for groups to have their own dedicated accounts on services like these (as opposed to using the 'group' and network functions...)?

Finally, any good rules of thumb on when it's better to create separate accounts when using a service for multiple purposes (for example, using Shelfari as a reading log as well as a list of possible acquisitions) and when it's better to simply use tags to differentiate within a single account?

Freakonomics and MySpace abductions.

SirStan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:27:25 -0800

I live in Vermont. I work in a small town that has been directly affected by the recent Brooke Bennett tragedy (family involved 12 year old in sex ring and killed her, attempted to blame it on a MySpace predator) in an industry that is directly related to dealing with the aftermath. I am also reading Freakonomics, which amongst other things has persuaded me to look past media hype and compare numbers to actual relevant data. I have two questions 1. How many children a year are kidnapped/abducted that can be directly attributed to social networking sites online vs other baseline statistics (how many children's parents kidnap them, how many children are killed due to negligence such as not belting kids in).

2. (Completely hypothetical) Given say a $500,000 grant to promote child safety, where would the money most be effective in comparative ranking to "ZOMG MYSPACE" alerts and education.

Are online predators really any statistical danger, or just an easy and new headline.

Sincerest form of flattery, or worse?

cobra_high_tigers — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:39:53 -0800

Somebody is joining social networking sites using my personal email address. Should I be concerned? Last week I got an email from Friendster, and yesterday an email from Orkut (in Portuguese, even!) about the account I'd just created at their sites. Only problem: I hadn't created an account at their sites. Obviously I did not click on the confirmation link in the email, but still. This is my personal email address (not the one in my MeFi profile), which consists of my real first and last name at gmail.com. It got me wondering... is this an attempt at some form of online identity theft or fraud?

I emailed Friendster about it, and explained the situation, and the CSR who responded said he deleted the profile that was created, but he explained it away casually, like "oh somebody probably just made a typo entering their email address." I was already kind of skeptical (like somebody made a typo and spelled my first and last name exactly, by accident?), but with another confirmation email from a different site, now I think somebody is doing this on purpose.

I know it seems kind of silly, like what's the worst that could happen with somebody setting up a profile using my email address on some dumb social networking site? But at the same time, I don't want some future employer to do a search on my email address and turn up a profile I didn't make with information about me that may range from just incorrect to outright negative.

Is there anything I can do to try to figure out who's doing this, and should I? Or should I just keep up this approach of waiting for confirmation emails, then writing the customer service department of that site and asking them to delete the account?

Open Source Social Networking, blah, blah, blah.

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:46:09 -0800

Yet Another Social Networking Question: I'm looking for something that does well with different user groups. I'm looking for an open-source or low-cost open platform to build a social networking site on. The dealbreaker that I've yet to see in any of the common ones is a strong "group" functionality.

I'd like to have profiles that are "teams", and profiles that are "fans", with fans having a different set of available functions (which could easily be determined using an ACL-type interface).

Anyone have a lead on something that they know will handle this?

Management consultants just wanna have fun

hot soup girl — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:48:14 -0800

Can anyone recommend software for a community forum / photo gallery / blog suitable for a corporate organisation? Mr HSG is looking for ways to add social interactivity to his employer's corporate website. The company is a small management consultancy, and they would like to create a password protected message board to aid social networking among employees.

* The general aims are to encourage networking, arrange social outings, and foster general chit-chat;
* They do not expect more that 100 users;
* They are considering a combination of message board, blog, and gallery - perhaps something along the lines of this package - but are open to other (more 2.0?) suggestions;
* It's uncertain how necessary is it to have these hosted on the corporate server - they will happily consider web-based social networking applications, so long as they can be password protected and accessed only by the company's employees.

(Mr HSG is not a boffin, and will not be implementing this himself.)

What is the best way to do this? Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!

Protocol for suicidal users on social networks?

infinityjinx — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:44:46 -0800

I work as an admin for a social networking site, and I'm trying to figure out protocol for how to handle users who seem suicidal. Do you work for a social networking site or know anything about protocol for this kind of situation? If a user is posting information and/or pictures on his or her public profile that suggests this person is thinking about killing him/herself, or is currently engaging in self-harm, do we have a legal responsibility to intervene in some way? (I know you are not my lawyer.)

I'm also curious as to what you think the moral responsibility is here as well.

(By the way, I do plan to bring this up to the higher ups but I'd also like to get the hive mind's input.)

Thanks, guys n gals.

They don't want to spam, they want to make sure they do things the right way.

visual mechanic — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:50:32 -0800

Are there established, respectable Agencies which can help a company market online using "Web 2.0" tactics – like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Youtube, blogs, widgets, etc.? I have a client who wants to market "the right way" (ie, no spam, with a real, human presence). I'm looking for some agencies that might help them execute some of their plans, which include: Running contests on Youtube and Flickr, hiring freelance writers to create a useful, valuable weblog, monitoring twitter and other sites for negative experiences with their brand so they can make the situation right, etc., and creating and distributing useful desktop widgets.

They are very sensitive to how easy it is to do things badly here, and so they want a real expert.

Do you know of any agencies who have particular expertise in any of these areas? My client wants an agency with a respectable track record, and lots of experience.