In my previous posts about the roles and tasks within an online community or community-based social network, I discussed the roles of the Community Editor and Community Facilitator. Both these roles, but particularly that of the Community Facilitator, are really a combination of roles, but it helps to categorise the
The core principle of The Cohesion Model for Sustainable Online Communities and Social Networks (as described in my previous post on 13th November) is that there are effectively three levels within a community – the Public, the Community or Collaborative, and the Private or Individual level. There is a role associated
The Cohesion Model for Sustainable Online Communities and Social Networks was developed by myself, Helen Whitehead, and Liz Cable over three years, and based on rather more than 15 years of experience in online communities and social networks before that. It’s also informed by the literature on learning communities, communities
The Twitterverse and the blogosphere are great places to find out information. Recently I’ve been alerted to: WordPress and Twitter: 35 Mega Twitter Plugins for WordPress, a post on the mostly excellent W3mag which has gone straight into my RSS reader. In this particular post, tools for creating links between
As I watched the fuss about the “balloon boy” yesterday – the story of a six-year-old boy who allegedly floated away in a weather balloon, but turned out to have been hiding all the time – I did hope he would be found safe, and was glad when he was.
How does one approach the introduction of major change in a much loved web institution? For over 12 years now I’ve run a children’s writing website, Kids on the Net, and for a variety of reasons I’m contemplating some changes – to bring it right up to date and keep
We’re often asked by our trainees and clients how to make a long web address into one of those very short ones that are easier to post on Twitter – or any other socal networking website that has limitations on the number of characters. Often the URL or web address of
There are always new ways to evaluate online marketing or search engine optimisation. Recently I’ve been experimenting with Google’s keyword analysis tool at www.google.com/sktool. It analyses a given website and gives you a list of keywords it finds and teells you you how many searches the keywords or phrases have
HiMyTribe is a new iPhone App that aims to counter the loneliness people may feel in a big city. It allows you to find nearby people who share your interests and alerts you to connect you. Created by French social networking developer Never Alone Anymore , the app uses GPS
Research out today suggests that 40% of Twitter messages, or tweets, are “pointless babble”. US Researchers Pear Analytics sampled the Twitter stream (mostly of Americans) and categorized the tweets as news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and those with pass-along value. They concluded that only 8.7% were of real value.