While I was living out in Amherst, MA I worked for the computer science department creating math problems in Adobe Flash (well it was Macromedia at the time). The project was called “Wayang Outpost”. It was a virtual SAT tutor that toned in on a students problems and presented exercises to help fill the gaps. It was a lot of fun to be part of.

Now I want to discuss some of the ways we contribute to a more organic form of learning. Social media provides its own set of E-Learning tools in the form of online communities that, once fully understood, can be a mecca of untapped knowledge. Between blogging, social bookmarking, micro-blogging and social networking we have multiple avenues through which to tap into this wealth of information. Once one learns how to efficiently navigate the virtual scholastic tubes, the possibilities are endless.

Our Learning Tools

First lets look at Twitter. I like to see it as a collection of experts. What they’re experts in is of little matter to me because I am not approaching them directly. All I have to do is bring up a topic and those closest to it will speak up and present their two cents and possibly point me to resources. Another approach is to only follow those who are experts in a topic that I am interested in. Like minded individuals sharing knowledge in real time 24/7.

Now I’m off to my virtual library. Or in the case, a social bookmarking site. I could go check out the most popular section on Digg or head over to see what StumbleUpon recommends for me today. These technologies are evolving to become reliable means of obtaining the information I want …. and fast.

And finally we have Blogs. Be it personal or on a specific topic, the blogospehere is notorious for putting out abundant information across multiple topics in epic proportions. Main stream media has already begun to tap into this emerging resource.

Can’t schools also use this information?

College’s and Universities are starting to tap into this massive resource. More specifically, a group of UMass students were instructed to monitor Twitter traffic concerning the presidential debates. It may still be early in the micro-blogging game to call Twitter a reliable means of obtaining and filtering information but it is truly a great start.

Problems?

There is reason to be weary however. I mean how can we validate any ones expertise online. How do I know your not just feeding me crap. Well I am a firm believer that the crap filters itself out when you have millions of users sorting through this content daily. This is where the means through which you find the blog becomes important.

Social Media is well on its way to becoming one of our main means of communication with the world. The potential is greater than ever for those willing to seek it out. The sky is finally the limit.

My new favorite “funded by burritos” micro-blogging service is definitely 12seconds.tv. I guess one could argue that it is the natural progression of micro-blogging and status updates.

As much as I love Twitter and Plurk, there is something much more real and personal about 12seconds that makes it appealing. The alpha community is pretty outgoing (and silly) and there is always something interesting queued up.

To encourage users to post, 12seconds does a daily challenge that you can reply to. The winner is featured below the following days question. It’s a great way to encourage interaction on the site and people really come up with some clever stuff.

Now the tagging system that is used allows for some interesting categorized posts. I experimented a bit and created a little game. You have 12 seconds to guess the name of each song. I can easily add new songs by adding my handy little ‘name-this-song’ tag. It will be interesting to see if any similar ideas catch on within the community.

So enough rambling about my new favorite service. Join in on the fun. Don’t forget to add me as a friend.

I wrote about how to use search.twitter.com to find contests and giveaways. Well because of that very post I am half way to winning my very own iPhone 3G and a year supply of chocolate.

I received a phone call from Newtree’s PR department about a week ago informing me that I was one of the finalists for the contest. This totally caught me off guard but I had secretly been hoping my story might stick out. The contest was pretty simple:

Inspired by the popularity of cell phone text novels in Japan, this short story contest required that entries be submitted via cell phone text message. Creative writers with dexterous thumbs were asked to incorporate all 11 NEWTREE Chocolate flavors in a short story of no more than 1,500 words. The judging panel has selected the following top ten finalists in the Gr8 Am. Txt Stry Contest. The grand prize winner will be announced October 13, 2008. - Newtree

Now they have announced a small side contest. The People’s Choice awards. If you think my story is the best (or if you just think I’m really cool) please go vote for me at http://www.newtree.com/contest.php.

So without further adieu… here is my story:

Ten miles to go and I’m falling to my knees. All i want is to stop the crave. I would beg for forgiveness, but I’m not sorry. The pleasure is worth this cocoon life has entrapped me in. Eight more miles and I’m getting week. Six miles and I’m longing for the vigor my last victim provided. Four miles and I’m starting to fade. Two more miles and my mind is lost in the tranquility starvation embodies. One more mile …. will I make it? Suddenly my veins begin to pump as the sexy smell of chocolate causes me to blush. I rejoicein a feast of tiny chocolate men. One meal was all it took to refresh my mind body and soul. Now off to the next “Little Chocolate Men Convention” to help renew me once again.

Isn’t that exciting. It’s obviously about chocolate eating vampires that travel from chocolate men convention to chocolate men convention to stay alive. I thought it was clever at the time of creation and still do.

So please support me on this endeavour and vote for me.

If you haven’t checked out my Twitter Starter Page, you might want to go ahead and do that before reading this post. You have to have a pretty basic understanding of how to use Twitter before you can really start using it effectively.

Sometimes however, you might need a little bump in followers to start getting the interaction you need.

How do I get my Twitter account up to par with the rest of the Twitter population?

A lot of people make one huge mistake when starting their first Twitter Account. They use a greasemonkey script or twitter adder to follow thousands of people in hopes of acquiring a quick following.

There are two things critically wrong with this approach:

1. Your Twitter stream is way crowded to engage in quality conversations and keep up to date on key users
2. Other Twitter users may write you off as spam and not follow you back

So here is an alternative approach that will help you develop a solid productive following that will allow for fruitful conversations.

Jon Bishop’s 5 Step Twitter Starter Program

Step 1: Set up your Twitter profile with a unique background, bio, location, URL and Photo. This is an important step to subconsciously show you are committed to using Twitter.

Step 2: Post a couple of Tweets to get the ball rolling. This can be anything from the standard “Finally on Twitter” to the more specific “Jon Bishop really helped me get this Twitter thing going”.

Step 3: Find some Local Tweeps. Check out TwitterLocal.net and follow roughly 20 interesting Twitter users that live in your area. As they follow you back, it might be a good idea to check out their blogs and see what they’re about. This would be a good time to try out your @reply skills to comment on how amazing their blogs are or simply the fact that you guys are from the same area.

Step 4: Find some like minded Tweeps. I use Twitter Search to find other Twitter users who share the same interests as me. It’s also a great way to check up on who is talking about my blog posts or my company

Step 5: Interact, then repeat steps 3 and 4. As your following grows you should try and stay very active by participating in conversations as well as providing your own updates on life, thoughts and the world.

That’s really all there is to it. It might be a good idea to try and keep your Followers to Following ratio as even as possible. It gives you a sense of authenticity that is really crucial in a social media environment.

One of my favorite parts of my job is hearing the words “well I like what I hear, now put a fence around it”. I’d like to think that this is easier said than done these days as most people forget one essential truth when it comes to Social Media:

Social Media is really only beneficial to a company as an extension of their existing infrastructure.

I personally don’t think of it as a new marketing technique because, well, marketers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from it. You can use it to help with customer relations, recruitment, product development, H.R., and the list goes on.

If we change the way we look at Social Media, we will be able to use it more efficiently.

Here’s a little list of don’ts to get you started:

• Don’t get a twitter account and follow 500 people right off the bat
• Don’t send an email blast out asking for diggs to your most recent post
• Don’t comment on a post just to receive the link back to your site
• Don’t post affiliate links on your favorite micro-blog

And here’s a little list of do’s:

• Be sincere
• Be original
• Be active
• Have a little fun

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was some sort of centralized posting system to make your giveaway known to the world. Oh wait there is.

Something I’ve been doing to win some free stuff is monitoring search.twitter for just that… free stuff.

Search Twitter for Free Stuff

A lot of these contests are easy to join….. usually just leaving a comment on their blog. Others are kind of fun, like a best caption contest. But the more you enter, the better your chances are at winning something.

So go and win many iPhones and Wii’s. Tell them Jon sent you. It won’t help at all but it makes me feel good about myself.

Plurk and Twitter have been great fun as have Identi.ca, Kwippy and Pownce. But there’s a new guy on the block, yes another one, with another funny sounding name. Rejaw .

Once again it is too early to tell how successful this new micro-blogging platform will be. It’s up to the community to decide, which is partly why Twitter is still so popular, it has a large community.

But what does Rejaw have the Twitter and Plurk doesn’t. Let’s take a look at some of ReJaw’s features.

Top selling points:

• Real time chat - This is one of it’s top selling points
• Images and movies - Just like in Plurk
  
• Guests - Guests can comment on shouts without having an account
  

Standard functionality

• Permalinks - Just like in Plurk and Twitter
• Shouts and whispers -  Rejaw maxes out at 1000 chars
  
• API
• Follow favorite users
  

Limited functionality

• Find friends - Can only find friends from facebook and gmail
• Desktop app - Currently only available on Mac but is being extended to PC and iPhone

So what makes ReJaw worth your time?

Well Plurk’s revolutionary commenting system increased communication by making it easy to use. Rejaw takes this same idea and allows unregistered guests to comment on your posts. This brings Micro-Blogging to a new level as anonymity comes into play.

The sky’s the limit.

So what do we have here? A Twitter clone with a commenting system and the ability to easily embed Video and Images. Furthermore, the character limit has been increased to 1000 characters.

Despite it’s few shortcomings there is a bright future for this new platform. It’s only a matter of time before the Rejaw API gives birth to intuitive new applications that will challenge Twitter’s prominence.

Follow me on rejaw

Don’t believe everything you read in this wonderful arena called the social internet.

Something I’ve noticed across multiple social networking sites is that a majority (not all) affiliate marketers will either lie or stretch the truth to get you to become part of their scheme. Every single one of them claims to be “the next big thing” on the internet and by getting in now you’ll make millions. The problem with that is all these big things are old things with some spit and a quick shine.

The truth is that there are a lot of ways to make money online:

• Legitimate business sales
• Product sales
• Ad revenue
• Paid blogging

The catch is that all these things require a special secret ingredient that MLMs and affiliate marketers seem to forget, originality.

Here is a classic example of what an affiliate marketer will do to make money.

1. Sign up to a site.
2. Create affiliate links to their ‘product’ or ‘ service’
3. Spam their links and propaganda
4. Deny doing any of this

What happens is they get a small percentage of the profit made off of that product or service if you buy it.

*Disclaimer* Affiliate marketing itself is not bad at all and in fact can be a great way to make an extra buck. It’s the ‘marketers’ that give it a bad name through their slimey methods and they’re spoiling the web with it.

Here is another example of an affiliate marketer, basically being stupid.

Inside Affiliate Marketing Says:

Hey nice blog my friend. Affiliate marketing is the fastest growing business in world. However its not that easy as it looks. Obviously you need advanced knowledge about affiliate marketing. If you are dead and broke , you can learn most of the startup tricks via marketing forums.

I’m sorry but I couldn’t have said it better myself. This was a comment on my previous post about affiliate marketing, which if they had actually read they would have seen it was speaking against affiliate marketing.

So here’s my nugget of gold for the day. Breath it in, swirl it around a bit, maybe gargle, and spit back out into a ceramic pot to keep for later usage. Social media is THE tool to meet people of like minds from all over the world and communicate in real time. That is all.