Enhancing your life with Technology: Social
Series Note: This is one part of a series about enhancing your life with technology. The series deals with computer based tools created with the intent of making your life easier so you can focus on other things, like life.
Are you a socialite? Do you spend every weekend out and about with friends? Do you have several different groups of friends to go out with? Why not let technology help you organize that busy social life of yours. I’ll show you a few tools that’ll help.
Social Network: Facebook
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, Facebook has become the social network of choice. In the case that you don’t know exactly what Facebook is, let me explain. After making an account, you can explain about yourself. What do you like to do? What is your favorite music? Things of that nature. Then you can add images or videos of yourself and friends. After the initial setup, you go find your friends. These could be everyday friends you see all the time, friends from college, friends from high school, or even just friends around town. You can then interact with these friends by sending them messages and playing games when bored. Facebook is typically used to get through those boring days and to keep up with friends you don’t see every week.
Keeping up with friends and being in the know: Twitter
Twitter hasn’t taken the next step to worldwide recognition, but it will soon enough. Twitter is a way to communicate with all your friends at once. So using Twitter, you can send a short message (140 characters max) to all your friends. This could be something like “Hey check this out” or “I’m going to the bar tonight for happy hour if you want to come” or anything you can think of. People will ‘follow’ you to get your updates. Likewise, you can ‘follow’ your friends or other interesting people to be able to see their updates. Twitter doesn’t stop there though. You can send in text messages or receive texts from your friends. Out in the city and want to invite people to come out with you? Just use your cell to send a text to Twitter. Out and about but want to still get information from your friends? Twitter can send you messages when they update. At work all day? Google Talk (Gmail chat) integrates with Twitter as well. You can send and receive messages from the Twitter bot (invite twitter@twitter.com to chat). If Google Talk, Twitter’s homepage, or text messaging isn’t enough to interact with Twitter then have a look at some desktop clients. TWhirl and Twitterific (mac only) are quite popular choices.
Although I did a decent job explaining Twitter, Lee LeFever does a much better job. Listen in:
Twitter can also be used to help launch your career. Problogger, Darren Rowse, offers up a good series discussing how to increase popularity on Twitter.
Part1: 5 Tips to Increase Twitter Presence
Part2: Pre-Prepared Tweets
Part3: TweetBaiting
Overall Twitter is a great way to quickly and efficiently talk to friends and find new friends on the internets. Having trouble finding someone to follow? You can always follow the AskLG guys: Will, David, or Justin.
Where are you at: BrightKite
Brightkite is a social service which focuses on location based messaging. The idea here is to let your friends know exactly where you are. Instead of “I’m at Joe’s Bar” like on Twitter, you say you’re at “Joe’s Bar @ 123 Congress, Houston, TX.” Don’t know the address? That’s cool, BrightKite can help you find it when you give BrightKite the name of the place you’re at. You can also include an image of what you’re looking at (normally taken by your cell phone) which might further entice your friends to come out. Bored at the your current spot? BrightKite can tell you what is going on around you and where your friends are at. Also BrightKite interacts with Twitter so when you update BrightKite, Twitter can automatically be updated as well.
Where are we meeting: MeetUp
Meetup is a service which allows you to find people of similar interests and meet them in your area. For me, I’m big into web design and live in Houston. A quick search shows me meetings for a web design group, refresh houston, a CSS club, a PHP club, and much more. There are tons of categories and clubs to join, so check out what is in your area. It’s great to find new people who like the same stuff you do and be able to discuss the things you love.
What’s going on: Upcoming
Haven’t you been bored one day and wanted to know what’s going on in your city? I’m sure we all have. This is where Upcoming comes in. Upcoming allows you to find out what is going on around your area. Things such as parties, concerts, sporting events, and festivals are included. In the case that something isn’t listed, you’re free to add it to the list to help out the Upcoming community. Upcoming also allows you to add friends. So you can view anything your friends are doing and vice-versa.
How are they used?
Overall these social networks are a great way to manage your life. Personally, I use Upcoming to find out what is going on where I live. I use MeetUp when there is something particular I want to go learn about. I use Twitter to keep tabs on my friends that I hang out with often. I also use Twitter to meet new people and learn about things I’m passionate about. Finally, I use Facebook to keep up with those friends I don’t get to see as often. This is just one way to use these tools with endless possibilities abound. What do you use to maintain your social life?
Next week in the series, I’m going to talk about maintaining media.
Tags: brightkite, communicate, concert, event, facebook, friend, Friends of AskLG, life, location, meeting, meetup, network, organize, party, plan, play, social, tech, technology, twitter, upcoming
