Most of you know that I have been blogging on a few different blogs, so I thought it would be good to do a weekly summary with links to my posts appearing on other blogs.
GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily
Recent Links on Ma.gnolia
A few interesting things this week …
A Guide to The Contextual Web – ReadWriteWeb
TrendsSpotting Presents “Influencers’ Predictions” slides collection. Issue 1 – Social Media Trends 2009
2009: Predictions Across the Web – ReadWriteWeb
Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope – research results – Social Computing Lab, HP Labs
Tracking Engagement, KPI’s Across Multiple Social Media Sites – El Consultador
Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising)
5-Part Social Media Process at Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech
Will the Great Depressed Push Facebook Higher?
Web Technology: Impact on Social Media and Community
In a recent Wired News Article, 6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now, Michael Calore talks about several web technologies that are already important for social media and online communities, but will continue to be increasingly important in 2009.
Identity Management. With all of the buzz behind OpenID, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect in 2008, will we finally be able to better integrate our profile data, friend lists, and other identity data to be able to better manage our information in 2009? While the big social networks have already been looking at ways to implement these technologies, smaller and niche social networks and communities (including corporate communties) will need to start thinking about them in 2009. How will you make it easier for your members to join a community while bringing any appropriate identity information along with them?
Lifestreaming. Most of us have accounts on dozens of different sites, so services like FriendFeed have been popping up to help pull our updates and those of our friends into a single stream where they can be more easily consumed. Does your niche social network or corporate community have an rss feed of each member’s activity and have you encouraged them to add this feed to their FriendFeed account?
Location Awareness. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about interesting ways to use location information as a part of my work with Shizzow. For me, location awareness is all about merging our online identities with real world interactions with real people. While it might be interesting to know that a friend of mine is visiting some exotic far away city, I am more interested in being able to find friends right now to get together for coworking, tea, or a couple of drinks at happy hour. How can you use location information to help your community members get together in the real world for meetups?
I hope this provides a little food for thought as you think about your social media and online community plans for 2009.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:
Top Fast Wonder Posts for 2008 and Some Silliness
I was looking at my Google Analytics for 2008, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the info.
Here are the top 10 posts or pages that generated the most page views for 2008:
- Taking Your Idea From Side Project to Startup
- Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks
- Starter Kit: Social Media and Social Networking Best Practices for Business
- Monitoring Dashboards: Why every company should have one
- Consulting
- Why You Should Avoid Mozy Backups
- Using Twitter for Brands or Corporate Identities
- Web 2.0 Starter Kit
- Hiring a Community Manager
- Starting Point
Most of my traffic comes from the typical sources: Google, Stumbleupon, and Twitter, but I also had a fair amount of traffic from ReadWriteWeb, eLearning Technology, Silicon Florist, and Metafluence.
The most common search results included: dawn foster, best community software, mozy restore, facebook for companies, community manager, shizzow, fast wonder, mozy sucks, and blogging tips.
I also enjoying going to the end of the list to find search results that brought a single person to my blog. Here are a few of the most amusing / interesting:
- beer consultanting
- breakfast places near san francisco bridge where king of jordan ate
- bubble tea facility
- clarinet atari
- death of myspace
- what is going on with all the social networking sites like wikis,blogs and twitter
- man + woman + online communitties
- handy tips + how to change a fluorescent kitchen unit bulb
- green dragon dawn foster
- facebook rss stalk
- community manager career — why?
- “highly illogical” spock
- bill gates quote faster
OK, enough silliness for today. I hope all of you have a happy new year!
2008 Year in Review for Dawn and Plans for 2009
I gave up on a holiday letter or cards a few years ago; however, last year I started doing a year in review post, and it seemed to work pretty well. Here’s the 2008 version …
Let’s start with the negative.
What did I want to do in 2008 that didn’t quite make it?
- Didn’t quite achieve 501(c)(3) status for Legion of Tech. The paperwork is nearly done and will be submitted in January.
- Didn’t get the O’Reilly Art of Community book published. For too many reasons to list here, we finally decided to can the project.
- Didn’t do anything spectacular enough that it prompted someone to write a Wikipedia article for me.
Now on to the fun part.
2008: A year of change
- My biggest change by far was deciding to leave my steady employment at Jive Software to become an Online Community and Social Media Consultant. I am very happy with the change, and despite the economy, things are going pretty well.
- Redesigned my blog with a better look and feel.
- Helped organize events like BarCampPortland, Ignite Portland, and more as the co-founder and chair for Legion of Tech.
- Ignite Portland was featured in the Oregonian resulting in mayhem, overcrowding, and a new LoT policy of no mainstream media coverage prior to events like Ignite and BarCampPortland.
- Spoke at a bunch of conferences: OSCON, Community 2.0, Innotech, BlogHer Business, Web 2.0 Expo, Ignite Portland, Love@First Website, a few BarCamps, etc.
- Attended too many local Portland events to count.
- I took my mom on a vacation to Maui where we spent time lounging on the beach and drinking fruity drinks out of pineapples.
- I joined Portland-based startup, Shizzow, to manage the Shizzow community (as a side project, since we are currently bootstrapping). We were also honored to be guests on the Strange Love Live podcast.
- Became obsessed with Yahoo Pipes resulting in a video podcast series with Yahoo Pipes demos.
- Began writing for GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily.
My personal hopes for 2009
- Grow Fast Wonder Consulting into a more successful business with a few more clients.
- Achieve 501(c)(3) status for Legion of Tech.
- Continue to help organize more awesome events in Portland.
- Finish my eBook about Companies and Online Communities.
- Learn more about Yahoo Pipes.
- Continue mission #GetOffButt to get healthier, stronger, and in better shape.
- Again, I want to do something spectacular enough that it prompts someone to write a Wikipedia article for me.
Another thing I’m excited about for 2009
- The Portland tech community. I rave about it almost constantly, but I do expect the Portland tech community to continue to produce exciting new companies, projects, and community organized events to become even stronger in 2009.
CSV File Inputs: 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Video Demo
This video shows how to get input from a list of items in a CSV file, and it introduces the loop module. A CSV file is a great choice when you want to fetch a bunch of feeds and change them frequently without having to update your pipe. If you haven’t already watched the 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Introductory Demo, I strongly suggest that you watch it. This demo builds on the basic structure developed in the introductory demo. The CSV file I’m using also contains the same feeds from ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM that we used in the original demo plus a few others.
More Details
- The Demo Pipe. A copy of the CSV File Input in Yahoo Pipes Demo click “View Source” to see the modules.
- Fetch CSV Module. Enter the URL of the CSV file (make sure that it already exists in a publicly accessible location) along with information about column names and separation characters as needed.
- Loop module with Fetch Feed. Loops through each element in the CSV file and fetches the feed associated with the item.
- Filter Module. Filter by a couple of keywords.
- Sort Module. Sort by date in descending order to make sure things are sorted in a logical manner.
- Pipe Output. The final module in every Yahoo Pipe.
I’ve created many Yahoo Pipes, and most of them have been published on my Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks page where you can also learn more about my Yahoo Pipes Training courses.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts
Comments for One Author on Multi-Author WordPress Blog
I wanted to have a way to find all of the comments posted on any of my WebWorkerDaily posts, but I couldn’t find an easy way to do it in WordPress (I don’t have access to plugins, since it isn’t my blog). As always, I turned to Yahoo Pipes for the solution, and I made it customizable so that others could use my pipe. Since I wrote this pipe for my use, it supports the configuration I needed, and I also tested it on TechCrunch, Mashable, and GigaOM. However, there were quite a few multi-user blogs where it does not work, so please pay close attention to the caveats below before using my new Comments for One Author on Multi-Author WordPress Blog pipe.
Caveats:
- Works only with WordPress Blogs
- Works only with blogs using Feedburner
- Will not work under non-standard URL / feed formats
I suspect that the WordPress / Feedburner combo is probably the most common configuration for multi-user blogs, so it should work for many blogs. However, if you aren’t using the configuration supported by this pipe, you should be able to clone the pipe and tweak it pretty easily to use other formats.
Usage:
- Go to the Comments for One Author on Multi-Author WordPress Blog pipe.
- Enter the URL for your Feedburner feed.
- Enter the author’s name.
- Grab the RSS feed output.
Please feel free to leave any thoughts or suggestions in the comments below.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:
Recent Links on Ma.gnolia
A few interesting things this week …
Santa’s Facebook Account – ReadWriteWeb
State of the Twittersphere – Q4 2008 Report
DCortesi . blog » My First Follow
Recent Links on Ma.gnolia
Writing for WebWorkerDaily and The Holidays
Many of you already noticed that I have started blogging on GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily site. Thank you so much for all of the congratulations, well wishes, comments, and more. The plan is to post an article or two a week on a freelance basis. I even got a head start before I left, so I have a couple more posts in the WebWorkerDaily publish queue that should go out sometime next week.
My first post was about making productive use of my holiday time, and I am happy to say that I am off to a good start. I’m posting this from the Chicago airport (where my flight has been delayed), but at least I managed to edit and encode 2 more 2 minute Yahoo Pipes demos during my last flight, but you will have to wait to see them until I post the next one on December 29th.
I’ll also be mostly off the grid until December 27th. I’ll be in rural Ohio hanging out with family and playing scrabble, but my internet connection will be pretty spotty during the trip. They have dial up access (no DSL or cable on the farm), and even my EVDO access is painfully slow. In other words, you could be kind to my inbox and wait to email me until after the 27th *hint, hint*.
Have a great holiday season!