Sharing

Image by Lee Sie via Flickr

Some of you have probably seen already that Google is sending new Google Wave e-mail with additional pack of invites. My first reaction was to post it on Global Voices mailing list and on Twitter. In seconds they were gone, and I was happy I could give then away as I enjoy sharing. But something @agakwiat said made me think: do we always share? do we live culture of sharing? For some of us it's obvious that certain information is there to be passed on others, to improve and simply contribute to their lives. However it is MY assumption!

We do live in different tribes, live different stories, and I am not sure we all understand what sharing culture of social media is about. Myself, I very rarely come across someone who does not have this attitude, but it happens very, very rarely and is usually rooted in their lack of experience.

Do you share?

Keeping it light

I had a very interesting discussion with @cornerthemarket yesterday about tonality of blogs, why we blog and how we keep them personal but still try to follow the main line of the site. You see, this one is dedicated to social media, activism and arts (arts simply because it's part of my life, and I think one or two photos time to time, or mentioning of an exhibition helps me to ensure the content is not too 'heavy'), but recently evolved, and I think it's moving towards my Polish one, very personal journal.It might be because I am considering moving all my blogs to one, self-hosted domain, or maybe because my life is evolving too.

Because I work in social media I tend to spend a lot of time at home working around topics related to work and somehow work topics, and my private interest in social media very often co-exist and complement each other. Now, working on WOM Experts Panels, I talk to extremely interesting people from all around the globe and constantly share insights into their and my region, which contributes to my understanding of the space. However I also run the risk of 'thinking geeek' all day so I thought I'd share with you few sites I use to loosen up a bit, and take a time off 'serious thinking' - but still in a geeky way.

First of all ICanHasCheesburger - I do not know if someone wrote a study about the reasons behind geeks falling in love with cats, but there is a strong dependency there, and this portal brings the best of it - always offering a funny moment or two. Actually, the more I read it, the funnier it gets!

There is the Simon's Cat, currently active on Facebook due to the release of its book version (can't wait to order it myself).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOHvZjiDANg]

There is the Savage Chickens blog.

And the always reliable Popjam, where Seven Legged Spider is still the best of 'all time'. Yesterday I met Rachel, who is posting on Quotes from the Street - a very good one, which also made me look back at Overheard in New York.

Gapingvoid is my eternal source of wisdom when it comes to life philosophy of a social media fan, enthusiast, professional  - whatever term you want to use.

Blogus Pospolitus is the source of fun in Polish edition for me. But all of those, managed carefully (read: daily newsletter for instance) bring a lot of lightness to all those heavy geeky and social topics. Enjoy and let me know if you find another rich source of everyday happiness!

G20 - ask your question or how social media gives you a voice

London Summit is a huge event, which hopefully turns out to be crucial and highly beneficial to the global economic situation of our difficult times, but it also seems like an event for leaders, not us - ordinary people.OK, we can follow the detials of the Summit on its website, youtube or twitter. We can ever comment. But it's all quite a passive interaction.

I am extremely happy to see SpinVox and Moblog stepping in with social media solution to this challenge. Thanks to their common initiative called G20 Voice eveyone can direct their questions to the Summit attendees and see the leaders responses.

This initiative seems to be more social media savvy, so you can join them not only on YouTube and  Twitter, but also on Flickr and Facebook. If you want to get involved - check this link or simply post about it and tag it 'g20voice'.

I am so happy to see more and more insights on the event and all this due to the more common awareness of power of social media! If you want to get a clear picture of the event make sure you check as many opinions as possible and have your say!

Btw: More on the social media presence of the protesters  here.

Barcamp London 6

It was really interesting to take part in Barcamp London 6 just week before the barcamp in Oxford! I really just had a few hours, but I managed to take part in few interesting sessions and talk to few amazing people! Quite in a rush I decided to quickly propose a session on Twitter ethics - simply because previous one was based around Twitter presence too. The insights on Twitter presence of individuals and large companies like BBC opened my eyes to few challenges of this constantly developing platform, where accepted behaviour also changes gradually.

• Do you, for instance, make a note of your intentions to post in several languages on your Twitter bio? Should we?


• If you ware dealing with large client who expects several accounts, how do you handle their main Twitter account? Who and how manages it?


• Is customer service possible, ethical and effective via Twitter? Under what circumstances?


• Is Twitter celebrity phenomenon worth 'following'?

Those and plenty of other questions were a result of a day at the Barcamp! If it were not for an important weekend plan, I am sure I would have trully enjoyed the rest of it:) Weekend plans do take priority though sometimes, so I am happy I could be at the barcamp for a while. I learned a lot!

(pix on my Flickr soon, but check the event site and slideshere for more info). Thx to the Guardian for hosting it and the other sponsors for making it happen! Great stuff!

We Follow - user generated Twitter directory

It's easy to use. It's useful. It's good source of information. That is all I need to actually join and use it. We Follow is a user generated Twitter directory created by Kevin Rose (the founder of Digg). When adding your user to the directory you are asked to choose three major tags and that is all you need to do. The rest is up to you - you can browse for most influential Twitter users in the current tags, you can see top Twitter users and popular tags. Simple, isn't? Since it's user generated, it does depend of its own popularity but I do not see why such a simple solution would not work for masses;)

(I claimed myself to be a social media, activist geek. Surprisingly, there is not too many activists there yet!)