Here's how to balance work & social media addiction!

Rob Diana shares his tips on how to balance work and social media addiction!

5:45AM – Before going to work, have a cup of coffee and spend 30-45 minutes checking social media:

• Read news and blogs in Google Reader
• Review Twitter for replies/mentions and various saved searches
• If you are a blogger, check your stats and make notes for your next posts

7:00AM – Once you are at work, do a final check of the same sites you checked before work

12:00PM – While eating lunch, do a full scan of your social sites for about 30 minutes:

• Review Google Reader
• Review Twitter for replies/mentions and various saved searches
• Scan FriendFeed for interesting posts and comments

6:00PM – Once you return home and have eaten dinner, you can dedicate a full 2 hours to social media interaction. I find 2 hours to be a good limit for me as I still can have time for my family.

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Want to complain? Use SNS!

Holiday season is drawing near and most of us have already made travel plans. Remember, if you have something to rant about during your holiday; it could be the flight delays, loss of baggage, poor in-flight service or entertainment etc, why not use SNS?

Reporter Ed Hewitt from Independent Traveller.com shared insights that the travel companies are using Twitter and other social media to attend to complaints before it escalates into a viral complaint. The examples he cited are Southwest and JetBlue who are extremely quick in responding to tweets by travelers en route and in trouble. A Southwest passenger tweeted about losing his boarding pass and was contacted by the airline immediately. Cool, right?

Read more cases of complaints via Twitter that were attended to asap by the airlines here

Tweeting on the go

Suzanne Choney from MSNBC reported on 21 Oct 2009 that based on a new study from Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly one in five Internet users is tweeting on Twitter or using another service to share personal and business updates, or to see updates about others. This means an increase to 19% from 11% last spring, 2009. Pew attributes the Twitter rise to three types of Internet users: those who already are familiar with social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace; those between the ages of 18 and 44; and those who connect to the Net wirelessly using mobile devices.

"I would have been surprised if we had not seen growth in Twitter and status updates since there is so much media coverage of it, from movie stars tweeting their thoughts to news anchors reading tweets on air," said Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and one of the authors of the study.

The full Pew study report

Is it okay to 'tweet' in class?

In Ngee Ann Secondary School, it's okay to 'tweet' in class! Amelia Tan from the Straits Times on 6 November reported that mobile phones and social networking sites such at Twitter are being used by the students and teachers in Ngee Ann Secondary as learning tools. 

In recognition for its innovative use of technology, Ngee Ann Sec was one of the 30 schools to be honored this year with the title of "Pathfinder School" by Microsoft.  Congratulations to Ngee Ann Secondary for being the 1st school in Singapore to be awarded this title! 

According to the Ngee Ann Secondary School's principal, Mr Adrian Lim, the school decided to use social networking sites to aid in learning and teaching because he believe that it is one of the ways to connect with the students. He added," Our students are from a wired generation. They are used to receiving information on their mobile phones instantaneously and in multimedia forms. If we don't think we need to change the way we teach, we are in denial."

An innovative way to test the students understanding of concepts that they learn in school is to test them via Twitter. In Ngee Ann Secondary School, the students were given assignments that required them to summarize physic concepts and tweet their answers via Twitter. 

Check out Ngee Ann Sec's Twitter http://twitter.com/ngeeannsec and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ngeeannsec accounts!

Farming = cool... Who knew?

No one expected that cow-herding and crop-harvesting would ever become the new fad for hip Facebook users. And yet it has.

If you're thinking about the Facebook social game application Farmville, then we're on the same page. Launched only in June this year, the cute - even educational? - game has since attracted 21 million users daily and over 60 million monthly worldwide.

Many players say the game is addictive. Some players have even admitted to reorganizing their lives around Farmville harvest times. And such an addiction takes away time from work, school and family. They say that the game's interactivity, and instant gratifications that you won't get in real-life farming, are major draw-ins.



Mark Skaggs, Zynga's vice president believes the popularity could be due to the wide appeal. ""I think there's something fundamentally human about planting and growing, especially food," he said. "Maybe it's in our DNA and social consciousness, for some reason. It just feels good."

What do you think about Farmville? Do you play Farmville, or other games on Facebook (e.g. Mafia Wars, Restaurant City etc.)? As always, we encourage you to leave your comments below this post!

Celebrity Tweets!

Now that more and more celebrities are jumping on to the Twitter bandwagon, it was almost inevitable that a site would be created specifically to aggregate celebrity tweets.

Aptly named Celebrity Tweet, the site displays all the latest tweets from a long list of mostly American celebrities (surprise, surprise). Visitors can also reply to the tweets directly on the site, and link up to the celebs' other websites or social profiles, if available.



If your favorite Twitter celebrity is nowhere to be found, there's also an option for you to suggest to add him/her to their aggregate list (try suggesting a Singaporean celeb!).

Which celebrities do you follow on Twitter or other sites (e.g. blogs, Facebook fan pages etc.)? Express your celeb love in a comment below this post. :)

What Attracts You To Social Networking Sites?

Our self-administered survey for youths aged 15-24 discovered that the following 3 are the top reasons why users are attracted to social networking sites:

1. To keep in touch with current friends
2. To find old friends
3. To snoop on others

Furthermore, the following 3 were found to be the most popular social networking sites:

1.

2.

3.

How about you? What social networking sites do you subscribe to or have an account with? More importantly, what attracts you to these sites? Post your own responses via a comment to this post. :)

Internet Use Does NOT Lead to Social Isolation

Hurray! A recent study by the Pew Research Center and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication in the U.S. discovered that the use of mobile phones, as well as the Internet - including photo sharing sites, social networking sites, instant messaging, and blogs - is not leading us to social isolation.

Dr. Keith Hampton, the study's lead author, says that face-to-face contact is still the highest form of communication within a person's "core network", i.e. a person's core group of close friends and family. "It turns out that those who use the Internet and mobile phones have notable social advantages," he said. "People use the technology to stay in touch and share information in ways that keep them socially active and connected to their communities."


Dr. Keith Hampton, lead author of the study
(photo source: Dr. Hampton's official faculty bio)

Interesting extra: users of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are 40% more likely to visit a bar.

How about you? Do you think your use of social networking sites is causing you to be more or less social in personal communications offline? Feel free to express your views via a comment to this post!

Social butterflies connect 24/7 as more FB & Twitter apps go mobile!

I managed to read the article in Straits Times, 'Digital Life' ( Wednesday, 4 Nov ) by Sherwin Loh. He did a feature story on Singaporeans who use their smartphones to be connected 24/7 on social networking sites. One of the interviewees was Sara Wee, a lead singer from the local band 53A and a self-proclaimed social network addict! She does all her updates on her phone and the band too stays in touch with their fans via their blog on Facebook or Twitter. I guess for those who enjoy following Hollywood celebrities on their tweet updates, there's also an option to follow Singapore celebrities :)

Sara Wee (photo source: 53A's official facebook group)

Also, the telcos are offering competitive packages to subscribers such as MobiTweet by Starhub where users can use their bundled SMS to update their Twitter accounts, M1 has attractive deals for students and SingTel signed an exclusive with INQ Mini 3G. With new smartphones such as INQ Mini 3G that's designed to be the do-it-all social networking device, updating on the go is easy!

With Christmas around the corner, I guess some people will be on the look-out for more attractive deals. If the deals are so sweet, how can one resist? I wonder if I'll be getting a smartphone this Christmas? ( hint, hint )

Are you...?

A contribution from a reader!
Hmmm...now all we need is a header. :)

Credits for the stock images:

• Hand

• Laptop