I’ve been testing out, using, and utilizing Google+ now for 5 days.  I’m proud to say that I was in on Google+ on Day 1,  because it’s like being in the ground floor of a building that’s being built around you.  There’s tons of activity, lots of potential, and builders who are actively listening to the ideas and concerns that their new tenants have.  Let me introduce you to the basics first, then I’ll share my overall thoughts.

What is Google+

Google+ is Google’s answer to Facebook/Twitter, in a nutshell.  In it, you can divide people into “circles”, share content with them as you see fit, upload photos and video, and communicate with them however you se fit.  Those +1 buttons popping up over the web are being put to good use now, serving as the “like” button that Facebook users are so used to.

The community is still small and intimate at the moment, and there’s lots of great discussions going around.  I’m privileged to see social media superstars like Chris Brogan and Scott Monty dropping by my updates to leave their insight or comments.  Ashton Kutcher is there getting his groove on as always, and even Newt Gingrich is poking around to see what this is all about.  Still, I’ve seen more discussion (legitimate discussion) happening over the last week on topics than I ever did on Twitter or Facebook.

Circles

You share information by categorizing people into “circles” – you can name them whatever you like, and those become the holes in which you fill your content.  You can take the fire-hose of content if you wish, but you can also only consume “friends” or “chess club members” to really dive down to who’s saying what.  It also controls who gets to see the content you produce.  If I put Holly into the “family” circle, and only share the update with her, she’s the only one that sees it.  What happens when Luke and Kieran are old enough to join? We get our own family communication board that no one sees but them.  Pretty cool

Picasa Photos

Anyone who has used Picasa knows what it’s all about.  It’s photo storage.  If you use Google+, you get any photo under 2048×2048 resolution stored free – which isn’t too shabby considering most monitors display up to less than 2000px at the moment.

Hangouts

You can start a video chat with up to 10 people – that’s 4 more than Skype – and open it up to let anyone who wants to jump in and chat.  I see a lot of potential here.

The Bottom Line

Google+ has hit the ground with Hussain Bolt speed.  There’s a lot of stuff going on that has quite a bit of potential, and they’re already doing a LOT of stuff right.  Look for this to get even better as it expands.

By the way… if you’re on, find me whydoncha?

Ok, I promise this is the last post about BlogWorld… but I wanted to elicit a bit of a briefing from people who attended (or didn’t attend) my session.  Namely, I had a few questions I’d like to get some answers to:

If you attended…

1. Did you enjoy the session?
2. What was your WordPress knowledge going in
3. Did something I say or do convince you to switch to WordPress?
4. Was there anything I did or said that was incorrect or erroneous?

If you did not attend (or attended for only a short time)…

1. Did you consider attending, but reconsider later?
2. Did you attend and leave midway through
3. Why did you not attend / leave midway through?
4. What would have enticed you to come / stay?

Four short questions for each group.  You can leave your thoughts in the comments below and I’ll try to answer each and every one.

Thanks again, and see you in BlogWorldExpo Los Angeles (#bwela) in November!

This post is the third of an ongoing series entitled “50 Days to a Better WordPress Blog”.  Over the next 48 days, Mitch will be providing small snippits of code, plugins, and things you can do to make your blog more attractive, attain new readers, and keep old ones coming back time and time again. You can see the entire series here.

There’s no better feeling than putting the last period (or in my case, an exclamation point!) on your blog post.  Knowing that your content is all ready for the world to see is exciting, and we have a tendency to want to blurt out our blog post on Twitter or Facebook as many times as we can to get people in.  But how much is too much?  Is there a “sweet spot” to sharing our own content to our followers?

And what of our readers?  Suppose they want to share your content with their friends and family (that’s the ultimate goal of any writer, for sure).  How can we make it easy for them to get our message out for us?

We’ll tackle the first problem in a bit, but let’s address the latter – making it easy for readers to share our content.  I typically recommend two sharing options when I set up client blogs – one at the top of the post (Digg Digg) and one at the bottom (SexyBookmarks).

Digg Digg

Digg Digg allows you to have bookmarklets for Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, or any of the other major social services with a single click.  It also shows the numbers of readers who have already done so.  If you’ve been to Mashable recently, you’re very familiar with this plugin (or at least the functionality it’s mimicking – the “rail” on the side that follows you down the page can be achieved with this plugin).

If the “rail” isn’t your style, you can simply embed the bookmarklets before or after the main content – and you can chose either the square or narrow rectangle (compact) options.

SexyBookmarks

SexyBookmarks allows you to drop in some really sexy bookmark-looking share icons (hence the name) at the bottom or top of your posts.  I highly recommend putting them at the bottom to drive your readers to share once they’ve finished reading your post.  All of the major services are there, and a lot of minor ones too.

I recommend setting up the “most popular” options as most of the big names are covered, as well as a few interesting ones, namely “PrintFriendly” and “Email/Gmail”.  Just goes to show you that people would still email a post or print it out for later reading as well as sharing it to their social networks.

So, How Much is Too Much?

This debate has been going on since social networks came into the limelight.  People want to share their content, but readers don’t want to be bombarded with links to your site all the time; they want to see that you’re doing other stuff besides blogging (after all, how else would you have stuff to blog about?)

There are a few schools of thought on this, and I encourage you to do your research to see what technique works for you, but I have a lot of luck posting twice a day: Once in the morning (before 11am CST) and once after noon (around 3pm CST).  Those two times seem to bring in the most traffic because the first post hits the people who content surf at work in the morning, while the second post hits people for the “3 o’clock block” and when they get home from work.  I may try posting in the evening to see if I get any more response – if I do, I’ll let you know here, but for now two times a day on the day it’s posted is fairly good.

Also, make sure to balance out content tweets (retweets with links, your own content, etc) with actual conversation – after all, people should know that you don’t sit at home and read links all day – they should see you out doing whatever it is you’re talking about – it makes for a much more real conversation that way).

Now go out there, do something, and talk about it – at the end of the day, isn’t that why we’re blogging in the first place?

Note:
I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with any of the things I talk about -
this is just me putting information out there to think about, and you
can make your own decisions about it.  You’re not sheep – I won’t treat
you as such.

Isn’t it ironic that we have a bit of a double-sided coin going on the Internet at the moment.  There’s a huge debate going on between Apple and Google, Flash and HTML5, over proprietary software.  People are clamoring for Apple to open up their platforms to allow all types of programming (Flash, specifically) instead of closing their boxes.  So, what do people do?  They tweet about it.

On the flip side, those tweets you’re sending out can now be used (and monetized) by twitter for any purpose whatsoever.  What’s more, is that if you post a tweet on your site, and it causes you to get ad revenue, Twitter is legally entitled to a share of that, because you are re-purposing their content:

In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the
advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against
any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing).

Scary stuff, eh? Your tweets, open to the free world, can now be used by Twitter for anything, including making money.  Makes you want to read those TOS clauses more closely.

So, I want to know what you think.  Where do you stand on either front?  Sure, Apple makes more money locking it’s hardware down… or does it?  Or, should Twitter really have as much power as it seems to with it’s latest Terms of Use update?

So I had the privilege of testing out the TwitCam service today, and (since I had nothing better to talk about), I decided to do one of my favorite summertime activities: Grill Hamburgers!

Sure, it was a little awkward at first, especially because I’m more accustomed to being behind the camera instead of in front of it.  But I’ve been looking for a great excuse to start recording events, random musings, my speaking, etc.

But, I think it was a huge success.  Can’t wait to keep using it.  Now, I need a widget to show my latest video on my WordPress page (hint, hint!)

If you look to the top right of this post, you’ll see a really cool button.  The service I’m using is called “Tweetmeme”, and you can use it to retweet post titles that sound worth sharing to your friends. 

There was a point when I actually cared enough about Digg to say that digging posts was worthwhile.  But, since gaming Digg is a sport for the high posters, trolls run rampant, and I rarely get enough traffic from Digg to even bother with it, this is a great alternative to be able to get my posts out to other people.  In one day, I’ve seen my twitter traffic go up, and I’m sure that as it continues to gain popularity more and more people will see the potential.

And if you use WordPress, you’re in luck!  Tweetmeme has a nifty plugin that does all of the work for you!

So, if you haven’t been closely following the incident involving TechCrunch, Twitter, and a very astute hacker called Croll, then you’re missing out on a turning point for internet security as we know it.

In case you’re new to the story, here’s what happened in a nutshell, via TechCrunch:

1. HC (Hacker Croll) accessed Gmail for a Twitter employee by using the password recovery feature that sends a reset link to a secondary email. In this case the secondary email was an expired Hotmail account, he simply registered it, clicked the link and reset the password. Gmail was then owned.
2. HC then read emails to guess what the original Gmail password was successfully and reset the password so the Twitter employee would not notice the account had changed.
3. HC then used the same password to access the employee’s Twitter email on Google Apps for your domain, getting access to a gold mine of sensitive company information from emails and, particularly, email attachments.
4. HC then used this information along with additional password guesses and resets to take control of other Twitter employee personal and work emails.
5. HC then used the same username/password combinations and password reset features to access AT&T, MobileMe, Amazon and iTunes, among other services. A security hole in iTunes gave HC access to full credit card information in clear text. HC now also had control of Twitter’s domain names at GoDaddy.
6. Even at this point, Twitter had absolutely no idea they had been compromised.

Whoa.

So, in retrospect, and even while the rest of the story is sorted out, what surface lessons can we learn?  And, maybe a more fitting question, how many of them should we know already?

(Most of these lessons assume people are only working online.  If someone wants your information bad enough, they might be able to use other, offline means to get it.  Make sure to take similar precautions offline as well as online to keep your information safe!)

Lesson 1: Don’t Use the Same Password on Every Site

Most of us are guilty of it, but it goes without saying that you should have different passwords for different sites.  Hacker Croll took advantage of the “human habit” of using the same password to access multiple services from one user (Gmail, Google Apps, iTunes, etc.)  What’s more, is that the victim had no clue that he was hacked because the hacker changed his password back to normal after accessing the account.  The result?  Hacker Croll was in the account, and the victim went about his daily business.

Lesson Learned: use different passwords for different accounts.

Lesson 2: Security Questions are Anything but Secure

Let’s hypothetically say you have signed up for a new social network. You create your password and set your security question is “What is my pet’s name?”  Your answer: “Spot”.  Three days later, you mention Spot’s no-good couch chewing accident on that social network.  Someone has just filled in a piece of the puzzle needed to access that account.

Combined with a password, a security question isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But an either/or scenario for them is dangerous.  Basically, it boils down to “Either you tell me your randomly generated password, or your pet’s name” – scary to think about in those terms, but it happens everyday.

Lesson Learned: the best way is to falsify or randomize the answers, and keep them in a safe or secure locked location.

If it asks you for “favorite food”, “favorite color”, and “favorite book”, then your answers could be:

• Favorite Food: Red
• Favorite Book: Jackknife
• Favorite Color: Treehouse

Of course they don’t make sense, but that’s why writing them down and securing them is (or not writing them down and just remembering them) will outwit any online hacker.

Lesson 3: Emails from Web Services = Keys to the Kingdom

You sign up for service x, you get an email thanking you for signing up… it’s pretty standard practice.  Some services even send you your password (isn’t that thoughtful of them).  Delete those emails as soon as you can.  Any email that gets archived for later, stored in a folder, or (even worse) kept in your inbox is a prime threat for hackers to access your sensitive information.

Of course, combine that with lesson one, and any email from a service could spell a hack.  If you use the same password for Gmail and Twitter, then finding one password opens you up for attack in every service.

Lesson Learned: Delete emails that have account information, or print them out and keep them in a secure place.

Bonus Lesson: Don’t Use a Hotmail Account as Your Secondary Email

Hacker Croll is a wily one.  When he found out that the Gmail account of “victim zero” was a hotmail account, he quickly hopped over to hotmail to try and access that account.  What he found was nothing short of a gold mine:  after a certain amount of inactivity, a hotmail account deactivates itself.  Hacker Croll simply recreated the account, requested a new password, and gained access to the account.  Shame on Hotmail for trying to cut their bottom line so much they take security into question.  <opinion> Then again, shame on Hotmail for not being more like Gmail.  </opinion>

Basically, they sound like common-sense items, but when it comes to online security, most of us fall into the “human habit”.  Online information is supposed to be quickly accessed, and passwords (honestly) get in the way of that access.  So we take shortcuts, simple solutions, and forgo security for simplicity.  I hope that what happened to Twitter, a big company, can encourage someone smaller (aka, the user) to be a little more careful in their security.

I’ve been following the story out of Chicago about the Bonnen v. Horizon Realty Group (latest post on Mashable is that Horizon is backpedaling) with some keen interest.  Here’s a tenant who says something bad about her (former?) landlord, to 20 people (the number of followers she has) and it ends up leading to a huge social-network-fronted outcry from the company.  It’s the first time that a company has sued someone over a tweet (to my knowledge).

The question is, does this really have any ground?  I can only hope not.  If Horizon wins this one it’ll mean that any company can sue you for anything they deem wrong that you say on Twitter.  It’ll mean that the free speech atmosphere of Twitter will be jeopardized and that we’ll have to constantly be looking over our shoulders to see if what we say will get us in legal trouble.

It’s a bad precedent.  Horizon Realty, I hope you really know what you are doing.  You’re on the verge of opening a very bad can of worms.

Anyone else care to weigh in?

Normally I’m not one to recycle information on the net (I think that we’ve already become a big enough echo chamber without one other voice being added) but I do like this PDF put out by 14 of the best minds in Social Media.  It’s a great read!

Social Media 2009

So, I was looking through a design gallery when I came across “Magpie” – which claims to be able to make you so much money by overtaking your twitter account at random intervals and posting an advertising tweet.  I signed up, but quickly quit after seeing some of the tweets coming out of it:

Hm… three tags right after each other with the same web advertising on it, with seemingly no contextual significance linking the account holders.  Is that a fluke?

Hm again – two magpie sites in the same order one right after another.  This is seeming less and less contextual/random and more and more just random tweeting.

OK, now that’s just getting annoying and frustrating (especially because those people have the option to post that link manually) – but they also can let Magpie do it for them.  Did they? or did they not? I’m not sure.

It’s just so random.  Maybe that’s because there’s only so much contextual advertising they’ve gotten (not sure how new this site is) but until they can better attempt to randomize (or at least fake randomize) their tweets, then I’ve gotta veto it.  And, if anyone starts Magpie tweeting me, I won’t immediately unfollow them – just point them in the right direction.

Your thoughts?

EDIT: GeekMommy is having this same debate as we speak.