Tag Archives: facebook

Using Facebook for AAUW

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These documents were publicized through standard AAUW channels about a month ago. There may be some interest from folks who aren’t in that loop.

Dear AAUW Webmanagers and AAUW Newsletter Editors:

I am pleased to announce the release of the second paper in the series “Facebook for AAUW”.

The links for these papers are:

#1: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddzhjjgr_41fmk9jr
#2: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dg5fnwtg_0c7srw2wx

The first document addresses “what is Facebook” and gives brief instructions on how to get started. The second document is a more in depth discussion of why AAUW members are finding Facebook a good platform for connecting with each other and how they are using it to advance the mission.

The documents have been authored collaboratively by a completely unofficial group of members from across the country who came together in Facebook. Many of them have found Facebook a comfortable place to exchange information on a wide range of topics — personal and professional as well as AAUW. We invite you to join us to find out if Facebook would be a way to expand your network and amplify your voice.

The documents are written for the “digital immigrants” — those of us over a certain age who may want some background information before jumping into this new environment. However, if you’d rather just explore on your own, feel free to skip the papers and go straight to exploring Facebook. Once you’ve joined, please do also join the AAUW group that you’ll find at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2419848109

At least one state convention will be using this information as part of one of their workshops. You may wish to use the link to the AAUW group or these documents on your web sites or in your newsletters to let your members know that there is an AAUW presence there.

Thanks, all.

-Nancy

Status of my Facebook Applications

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Here’s a quick look at the Facebook applications I’ve tried on my profile, the ones I’ve kept and the ones I’ve disabled.

Applications

  • Facebook Basics
    • Friends
    • Groups
    • Ads and Pages
    • I am a Fan of (like groups for pages)
    • Mini-Feed
    • Information
    • Education
    • The Wall
  • Information I provide
    • Command Post – an easy way to post info to multiple places. I use it to post to Twitter — the interface is actually easier to use.
    • Profile HTML, Profile Box – allow posting of arbitrary HTML on the profile. I’m using it on the AAUW NC page to show info from AAUWNC.org’s sidebar. It’s not dynamic, just pulling things statically.
    • Simply RSS – reposts a configurable RSS feed. I’m using it on the AAUW NC page to repost a yahoo pipe that combines the various AAUW RSS feeds.
    • Notes – miniblog items and imports of this information stream
    • Posted Items – links that I want to highlight
    • Flickr Badge – photos I post on Flickr rather than Facebook
    • Wordbook – import of the branch news
    • Where I’ve Been – not used very much
  • Information I find that might be of interest to others
    • Podcasts – I was hoping to use this on the AAUW NC page, but for now it’s on my profile. Links to NPR rebroadcasts and such.
    • Swarthmore College News – Cool. But actually more interesting for the architecture. Thee are several “news” apps around — it’d be good to find out how they work.tt
    • Feed Friend RSS – primarily AAUW related RSS feeds; has changed in the last month to put info in my mini-feed
    • del.icio.us – primarily items tagged aauwtech
    • SlideShare (for slide shows written by others; I tend to post my own slides elsewhere)
  • Fundraising applications
    • Change.org – campaign based. Useful for linking nonprofits to a “change” to educate the change supporters about the mission and capacities of the nonprofit.
    • Changing the Present – campaigns linked to a specific nonprofit. Good for micro-payments to honor a friend or for a group to collaborate to raise a specific (usually not very large) sum. Seems well matched as a substitute for secret Santa gatherings — at least for groups that are just too serious for such frivolity as Dollar Store gifts.
    • Causes – campaigns linked to specific nonprofit. There’s no AAUW presence, and it’s not clear the volunteers are empowered to create one.
  • Social Networking applications
    • Blog Friends – I’m not sure I get this one. It appears to recommend blogs based on your interests.
    • Introductions – allows me to introduce one friend to another
    • Top Groups – provides quick links to my most used groups (but has even less information about recent updates than the standard Groups application)
    • Interactive Friends Graph – works with Introductions to visualize friends who don’t yet connect
    • Bumper sticker – allows for sharing “badges.” The app, though, has some serious problems and is too flakey for a general recommendation.
    • My links – links to me on other social networking sites

Concerns

  • Very few apps work on pages. How to find good ones there is a challenge. In particular would like to use the notes feature, particularly if enabled to import a blog.
  • A simple training app like Flashcards would be helpful
  • I’m still looking for a way to integrate Twitter with a page. See twitter.com/aauw07. If I find a good app that integrates “status” with a page, I’ll create a Flickr account to post those updates for AAUW NC.

Disabled or Deleted

  • Virtual bookshelf — may reactivate once I have time to read
  • Word-A-Day, Zoho Online Office, – just didn’t use
  • Questions — would more likely use this on LinkedIn, not Facebook (?)
  • Flashcards and FC Test – developer seems to be off on other things, and until there’s a search function it seems minimally useful
  • Circle of friends – public or private “circles”. This functionality (like address lists in your e-mail) is now built in to the Facebook Friends interface. It’s more flexible and easier to use there.
  • Entourage – panel of friends’ pictures, can be easier to find them there. I just don’t use this.
  • Hotlists – I’m not into the ranking here.
  • My Cookbook – Okay. I posted one recipe. But if I think of saving one, I’ll post it at member.acm.org/~shoemaker And if I need one, I go to epicurious.com
  • Top Friends – not used.
  • Advanced Wall – not used. Let’s keep it simple, people.

Discussions on Facebook

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For the last couple of days I’ve been involved in a Facebook discussion of 12 people, 34 messages so far. It’s taking place as a message thread — showing up in my INBOX. I’m trying to capture the pros and cons of Facebook message platforms –

1. Message threads.
You can add many of your friends to a message and then the default is that everyone will see everyone else’s replies to the thread. This is better than e-mail (even threaded e-mail, I think) in that the messages all appear to be part of one virtual document. The big drawback is that ONLY those who were on the original message see any of the replies.

2. Discussion board topics
Well, these can have the same characteristics of Message threads, but at the moment there’s no easy way to notify people about the creation of a topic. If they’re a friend of the person who created the thread, they may notice it in their news feed. If they reply once, they’ll get notified of future replies. But how are they first notified that the topic exists? For groups where the members check in quite often, this can work. But for communities that are just making the transition from e-mail lists, it seems awkward. This is where a better news system for groups would be an awesome feature.

3. Posts and tagging
A friend has experimented with creating a post and then tagging the post with the names of the folks she wants to read the post. They’ll then be notified of the tag, and she had good success in getting several people to comment on her post a few days ago. This is limited, though — she said 30 people? — and seems to be turning “tagging” on its head, where a tag generally means this post is *about* someone, not that the post is “of interest” to someone.

The fundamental problem seems to be a limitation on how Facebook republishes information about groups and pages — there’s nothing like an RSS feed for the changes in the group, at least none that I’ve found.

But an auxiliary problem is how the conversion will work for groups that are currently “living on e-mail lists”. What’s the pull to get them to Facebook? Is there one that’ll appear in the short term?

Facebook pages – update

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Sometime in the last month or so, Facebook seems to have put some effort into cleaning up the problems with their initial release of the “pages” function. Things still aren’t perfect, but two big problems I’d bumped into seem to be working now:

  1. Events can now be edited.
  2. There are additional applications that can be added to pages, and there doesn’t seem to be as much confusion about adding an application to a page getting confused with adding an application to a profile.
  3. The “notes” application which can be used to pull in an RSS feed/blog is now available for pages.
  4. The “simply rss” application to republish a feed can also be added to pages. [Maybe Facebook is finally getting the idea of how important this is?]

Check out the AAUW NC page (and  consider becoming a fan) to see what I mean …

Status of my Facebook Applications

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Here’s a quick look at the Facebook applications I’ve tried on my profile, the ones I’ve kept and the ones I’ve disabled.

Applications

  • Facebook Basics
    • Friends
    • Groups
    • Ads and Pages
    • I am a Fan of (like groups for pages)
    • Mini-Feed
    • Information
    • Education
    • The Wall
  • Information I provide
    • Notes – miniblog items and imports of this information stream
    • Posted Items – links that I want to highlight
    • Flickr Badge – photos I post on Flickr rather than Facebook
    • Wordbook – import of the branch news
    • Where I’ve Been – not used very much
  • Information I find that might be of interest to others
    • Feed Friend RSS – primarily AAUW related RSS feeds; has changed in the last month to put info in my mini-feed
    • del.icio.us – primarily items tagged aauwtech
    • SlideShare (for slide shows written by others; I tend to post my own slides elsewhere)
  • Fundraising applications
    • Change.org – campaign based. Useful for linking nonprofits to a “change” to educate the change supporters about the mission and capacities of the nonprofit.
    • Changing the Present – campaigns linked to a specific nonprofit. Good for micro-payments to honor a friend or for a group to collaborate to raise a specific (usually not very large) sum. Seems well matched as a substitute for secret Santa gatherings — at least for groups that are just too serious for such frivolity as Dollar Store gifts.
    • Causes – campaigns linked to specific nonprofit. There’s no AAUW presence, and it’s not clear the volunteers are empowered to create one.
  • Social Networking applications
    • Introductions – allows me to introduce one friend to another
    • Top Groups – provides quick links to my most used groups (but has even less information about recent updates than the standard Groups application)
    • Interactive Friends Graph – works with Introductions to visualize friends who don’t yet connect
    • Entourage – panel of friends’ pictures, can be easier to find them there
    • Circle of friends – public or private “circles”. Allows for messaging groups of friends in an ad hoc way (i.e without setting up a group). Compare address lists you keep in your address book vs. e-mail lists hosted on the server.
    • Bumper sticker – allows for sharing “badges.” The app, though, has some serious problems and is too flakey for a general recommendation.
    • My links – links to me on other social networking sites

Concerns

  • Very few apps work on pages. How to find good ones there is a challenge. In particular would like to use the notes feature, particularly if enabled to import a blog.
  • A simple training app like Flashcards would be helpful

Disabled

  • Virtual bookshelf — may reactivate once I have time to read
  • Word-A-Day, Zoho Online Office, – just didn’t use
  • Questions — would more likely use this on LinkedIn, not Facebook (?)
  • Flashcards and FC Test – developer seems to be off on other things, and until there’s a search function it seems minimally useful