In a typically erudite post from David Cushman, he asks “What makes you share?”

While he discusses the virtues – or otherwise – of taking deliberately contrary positions, I think the highlight of the post for me is the following:

…the only way we can find others who care about the same things we do is through one or other party expressing that concern. Until you share your thoughts they have no value to you or your network. They contribute nothing to making your life better or the world a better place.
But the simple act of sharing what you care about can make change. When you share you allow others to access your thoughts and to discover you…

I mostly share to learn. The old saw is “the best way to learn something is to teach it”. I also think it’s better to make your views, interests and experience open to your peers – as it adds value to your interactions. I’m a remote homeworker, and reading my social media/shared stuff will give people a better idea of what I’m like – for good or ill…

To explicitly answer David’s questions

So what drives you to share?

The fascination of discovering what other brighter people have learned or thought – and how easy it is to learn these things.

What would make you share more?

The improving of the technology; for me it went something like delicious, blogs, my ongoing love – Twitter, and latterly posterous, bit.ly and Facebook with Selective Tweets.

So, what makes you share?

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Who is this masked man?

According to a work colleague, it probably should be me.

Why should you hide your identity?

To be honest, I’m not really sure. One of my colleagues said they’d like to separate their updates depending on the audience, their facebook feed being different to linkedin for example.

I was fine with that – after all, I use hashtags in Twitter to decide whether I send an update to Facebook(#fb), LinkedIn (#in) or Yammer (#yam) or none of them. Where I was puzzled was when another senior colleague said he thought most folk would probably choose to maintain different identities and say different things to different audiences.

I said

I talk differently to my wife, and about different things; my persona is authentic, which is important so that people can build trust…I’m friends/contacts with differing groups of folk [on] Twitter, FB, LinkedIn. All bleed into each other, so I need to be “real”.

What do you share?

I’m a moderately open sharer, and you can find links to my Twitter, Posterous and Friendfeed on the blog. I’m also on LinkedIn, Flickr, and you can see loads more on flavors.me. You’ll see different things on each of them, but you’ll find the same tone. I’m me, wherever I am.

I don’t share all my KM stuff on Facebook; it would bore my Coastguard friends rigid. I don’t tell people on Yammer about a recent shout where we went to a casualty on a beach; it might not interest them. I don’t usually “friend” work colleagues on Facebook, because they are different audiences; but some I do, and I’d look pretty odd if my tone wasn’t authentic.

How many identities do *you* have?

Sorry guys, I just have this one. What about you?

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I am indebted to @jennybee for this who retweeted

“RT @AndyBold: just as the Times paywall is fully raised, Guardian says “Please republish our articles on your blog!” http://bit.ly/9YFlHY”

So, as an initial trial, here’s an example.

This article was written by John Crace, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 2nd July 2010 12.53 UTC

And a very warm welcome to all our readers from The Times. We’re very sorry you awoke to find you could no longer read your newspaper online without a credit card and we feel your pain.

We couldn’t get into the Times site either last week when it was supposed to still be free as the registration system had crashed. But we can help you through this trauma. Call it a belief in an open internet or care in the community if you like, but here at the Guardian we can offer everything you ever wanted from the Times – and more – for nothing.

I suppose I ought to start by introducing myself. I write the weekly Digested Reads, among other things. As this is a sales pitch, I’ve been asked to mention that the new Oxford Book of Parodies says I’m one of Britain’s best parodists, dead or alive. You can work out which.

To many of you, much of our website may seem a bit unfamiliar. We’re not going to try to hide the fact that on certain – make that all – issues we tend to be the teensiest bit liberal.

But don’t let that scare you. We don’t bite. Very hard. And we do have a few of our very own Tories writing for us, though apparently they don’t like being called Tories so I’m not allowed to say who they are as they have friends in very high places and could get me fired.

It’s possible you last read the Guardian when the sports coverage ran to a single line – “Last night England lost 4-1 to Germany in a game of Association Football”. Well just check it out now. We suspect you’ll find it rather more interesting and fun these days.

And the same goes for all the other subjects we cover – politics, comment, education, environment, books, film, music, TV and a whole load more.

There’s no need to miss your favourite columnists either. We know you like Caitlin Moran’s Celebrity Watch but excellent though Caitlin is, check out her inspiration: Marina Hyde’s Lost in Showbiz. (Sample quote: “Until Wednesday, Madonna had appeared to be dealing with the Guy-shaped hole in her existence the best way she knows how: by frotting a couple of nuns on stage every night in a crowd-thrilling tableau that hints at both the eternal fragility of the human heart and the recession-proof nature of amyl nitrate.”)

We’ve never quite understood your fascination with Giles Coren, especially as his much more talented sister Victoria writes for us twice (yes twice) a week, but each to their own.

And look, we’ve got loads of other great writers — Patrick Wintour, Gary Younge, Polly Toynbee, Amelia Gentleman, Zoe Williams, Simon Hattenstone, Michael Billington, Simon Jenkins, Alexis Petridis and dozens of others who will knife me in the front when I get back into the office for not giving them a namecheck.

We can also guarantee to be a 100% Melanie Phillips-free zone – although we are happy to count her as one of our most avid readers. She’s always moaning about us on her Spectator blog.

To make you feel right at home, we run a selection of interminably dull pieces by the great and the good that no one but the commissioning editor ever finishes, but I’m not allowed to mention who they are for much the same reason as I can’t name the Tories.

But if you stick with us, you’ll soon work out who they are and stop reading them for yourselves.

There will of course be a few very noticeable differences. We don’t always write about Rupert Murdoch in the way the North Korean media reports Kim Jong-il and we have occasionally made a critical remark about Sky and News International.

You may however find it refreshing that we do also criticise the Guardian Media Group when they step out of line.

We’re told that most of you read the Times online just for Jeremy Clarkson. But look, he’s here too! Or rather his avatar is. But we don’t think you will be able to tell the difference …

What’s the point of Norway? On the night I stood having a cigarette outside Lillehammer’s equivalent to Piccadilly Circus, I didn’t see a single car. I felt like a lonely fat poof hanging around outside a public lavatory, while my friends George and Michael were inside getting it on with an Eskimo in salmon-pink, reindeer-skin chaps. And talking of which, here’s the Mazda MX-5, the gayest car ever built.

Fighting my way past the scores of Hungarian paedophiles and Muslims wearing waistcoats packed with explosives whom Tony Bliar and his multicultural cronies have personally invited into this country brings me nicely on to the Lexus. Here’s another piece of foreign rubbish we could do without. If we filled every Lexus with Germaine Greer and her bunch of dungaree-wearing lesbians and sent them back to Japan, the country would be a far better place.

OK, so it was me who wrote that.

And if you get fed up with too many words – as I’m guessing you might well be by now – then catch up with all our podcasts and videos. So don’t be shy. Have a look around wherever you fancy. We can guarantee you’ll have fun and it won’t cost you a penny. Come on in. Thirty million online readers can’t all be wrong.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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I’m still trying to find my way through what social media/”Web2.0” actually means to me.

I have accounts on lots of services, and use:
Twitter – a lot
Facebook – a bit
LinkedIn – a bit
I blog – a little

I glance at other services, share some photos on Flickr and follow a few folk on friendfeed. Prolific posters on any of the services, I tend to consume via RSS.

One of these is Robert Scoble, who is hugely well known – in certain circles – and has made a recent career about knowing things in this space.

I was staggered to see in his recent post Twitter’s platform shortcoming

… last week I learned that there are tons of followers who just follow you to get you to follow back

I thought everyone knew that. But then, there’s loads of stuff I don’t even know that I don’t know.

Why do *I* follow people?
I know you, you’re geographically close to me, I liked your blog post, someone I follow has @ replied with something of interest.

If you follow me, and you’re not immediately interesting, or your tweets are pushing links all the time… sorry, I won’t follow you.

I can’t remember ever knowing something before @scobleizer. I did this time.

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As @andypiper said

although the list of “IBM*” Twitter IDs is useful, it is far from complete – there are many IBMers active here

So, I don’t feel so bad in pointing to:

• @BTCare – BT’s face for residential customers
• @BTBusiness – BT’s face for business customers
• @BTFresca – behind many of the world’s fastest growing and most successful ecommerce websites
• @BTOpenZone – news and help for BTOZ customers
• @BTServiceUpdate – Service status update for BT Business Broadband or phone line (see http://ow.ly/ukd3)
• @BT Tradespace – online community for SMEs, individual sellers and customers
• @btviewpoint -
  BT Viewpoint – Latest developments and trends in business communications and cloud computing
• @insightsideas – Business insights and Ideas from BT Global Services
• @ribbit – open platform for voice/2.0 integration
• @flcmorrison – pamela morrison, something on Barracuda, Global Services
• @busyhobs- Alan Hobson, BT Global Services
• @gadgetmanmike – Mike Hinton, Head of Service Management EMEA, BT Conferencing
• @gkc – Gary Casey
• @iain_mac – GM for BT Business Service
• @Jermolene – Jeremy Ruston, BT’s Open Source head lad
• @jpdenison – GM for BT Systems and Innovation
• @martinfaux – working on BTB’s Proactive Digital Care initiative
• @mccartc3 – Clyne McCarthy
• @mcreedy – Michael Creedy – BT Wholesale Customer Services Network & Planning
• @raymond_merrill – Raymond Merrill, HR Solutions specialist
• @sgt101 – Simon Thompson, chief research scientist for intelligent interactive systems
• @srowney – Simon Rowney, Head of Technology Improvement
• @stan1ey – Steve Stanley, BI Specialist within Retail Service Design
• @Stewniblock – Stew Niblock, works for BT Business, specializes in setting up lines, broadband and mobiles for business

I’ll add any other sites/folk who identify themselves as BT on request.

[25 July 2011 - still happy to do this, but there's now so many BT folk, you might be better searching ]

[13 September 2011 - just to highlight, I'll only add people who are unprotected, as it allows potential followers a much clearer view of what you are like]

I work for BT and I’m @steveellwood, but highlight this blog post is not an official BT statement of policy, and was done to provide a quick link.

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Two face

Having seen all the furore about Facebook names, I got mine.

Originally, it is http://facebook.com/steveellwood.

However, you can also find it – and me – at http://steveellwood.com/facebook.

Similarly, I’m http://twitter.com/steveellwood – but you can find me at http://steveellwood.com/twitter.

What’s interesting – to me in any case -  is how I ended up with my “branded” pages.

I’d seen Paul Downey, @psd, make a comment about facebook names. I’d a while ago added Anil Dash, @anildash to my friendfeed list – to my shame, I’ll admit I’m still learning what I might do with Friendfeed, so I spotted the Facebook names post I blogged about the other day.

In the comments about that, I saw the approach Ross Rader (@rossrader) took, using the link to his domain.

I twittered about this, and a friend and colleague Rob Collingridge, @robcollingridge, took this up, and implemented it on his domain. I’m like “Wow, was that easy to do?”

Rob sticks up some instructions on his Facebook wall. Drat, my domain is hosted on wordpress.com. Maybe I need to selfhost. I’ll ask.

Another twitter friend, @akaSteve, encourages me, and kindly offers assistance. I already have hosting though, so a day later, my domain is moved, my blog is moved and upgraded – and I can point to Twitter and Facebook from my domain.

All because I saw something on Twitter.
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Back in October, I was reminding people to keep up with their social networks as the recession brought challenges.

While it was hardly prescient, it was brought home to me when my role at work changed; my operating division had what’s called a headcount challenge – basically, they needed less people to run the work – and I was placed in what’s called a transition centre.

Now, for years I’ve worked on an assignment basis – work comes up, I say I’m interested, and if suitable, I get to do the job… which might be for a month, a quarter, or even a year or two. You learn a lot of new skills, get to work with really interesting people and technologies and then move on.

This means moving to a new role is not a surprise, and nor is having to change what I do. Currently, I’ve been asked to manage some folk as they move from one role to another.

Nearly everyone realises as the business environment changes, the work we’re carrying out has to change – and we’ll need to be flexible to do this. What I’m looking forward to is using some tools rather more Enterprise 2.0 than spreadsheets to help people on their journey.

Whatever people like me do to help individuals, their new roles and assignments have to be found by them – and one of the best ways? Through their own networks.

So, I repeat my plea.
Keep up with your social networks.

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Couple of things:

The world’s changed, and it’s not turning back

used to be their strapline – but they’re now emphasising

cheaper, quicker, sexier

as what the social media stuff can do. Look at their site to see what they are about.
A couple of the points they raised struck me – the takeup of social media amongst the young is astonishing; they highlighted a Forrester report which segment the social media area into

• Creators
• Critics
• Collectors
• Joiners
• Spectators
• Inactives

and this is segmented by age – with the creatives and critics highly represented in 16-24, with spectators and inactives being preponderantly 50+ (like me!)

perhaps nothing too new for some of us – although there are scary figures about the change in media consumption, but something he said struck a chord. More or less:

… a lot of people seem to be getting into the space; I mean, look at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office – they’re a lot of suits, but they’re on Flickr, on YouTube, on Twitter, they blog… where are you? I mean, c’mon guys…

I thought, that can’t be right, can it?
Hmm…
So, I had a brief look, and found a Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and blog platform presence for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. It may not be exciting, but it looks like they do have a coherent social media strategy.

What are you doing?

If someone looks for you on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter – what will they find? If they search for a blog presence or social media involvement – what will they see?

If you’re not taking part in the conversation… it will go right on. Without you.

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Everyone needs friends and contacts

While we find our way through the next year or two, there are going to be many changes. Orders get cancelled, expenditure is cut, and jobs will go.

If your circumstances change

Change brings opportunity, so accept it is inevitable, and look forward to what it will bring.

Your network is key to finding opportunities, so keep up with your network.

If you stay as you are

You’ll be fortunate, and unusual, but your friends and contacts will need you.

You may be key to them finding opportunity, so keep up with your network.

Change brings uncertainty

In the midst of change, people look for stability. Your tweet, blog post, IM or phone call might be the touch of normality people look for. Don’t stop being a social creature. Keep up with your network.

I was so tempted to have as the previous paragraph:

“Uncertainty brings doubt.
Doubt brings fear
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate . Hate leads to suffering.”

but I thought leading with Yoda

might be a bit much.

Image Credits: Litandmore &
bbaltimore

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