Facebook is Preparing us for Virtual Reality

Last week's announcement by Facebook that they are adding support for 360 degree video and the release of the 360 degree Star Wars video are certainly intended to help prepare us for the upcoming release of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

I watched the video on my desktop computer which is a different experience than a fully immersive headset. You can look in any direction and see what is happening by dragging the screen with the mouse, but I am sure it would feel more natural if the direction of view happened automatically when I turned my head.

However, I question whether video can ever be a fully immersive experience. While it is interesting to be able to look in different directions, in the real world you could also change the speed and direction of travel. Changing the direction of view only leaves me with the feeling of being an observer rather than a participant.

What are your feelings about the 360 degree video capability?

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Social media activity on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are an extremely effective way to build market awareness and sales leads. But they only work if you stay engaged every day.

Whichever social network you choose, reading and posting needs to become as much a part of your daily routine as showering or brushing your teeth.

If you skip showering for a week because you are too busy, you probably won't smell very good.  Haphazard social media marketing stinks too.



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Be Interesting and Interested on LinkedIn

The Blogosphere and Twitterverse

Your First Impression

Retweet or Retire

Sincerely Social

Elise Ellis manages social media for Black River Imaging.

The comedian George Burns once quipped, “Sincerity - if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” When I read the social media feeds of some professional imaging companies, I get the impression that they based their interaction style on Burn’s philosophy. Plenty of product news, but everything else feels a little unnatural.

Black River Imaging, a professional imaging lab in Springfield, Misouri, has a totally different approach. Black River Imaging has embraced social media with real sincerity, enthusiasm and a love for genuine interaction with their customers and fans. The 19,000 fans of the lab’s page on Facebook can sense that the page is managed by a real person who loves life, loves photography and loves interacting with them on Facebook.  It is not uncommon for a post to generate dozens of comments and likes.

The Black River Imaging Blog includes book reviews, photography tips, social media ideas, guest posts from photographers, reports from tradeshows and a few product introductions. Each post is thoughtfully written and brimming with joyous enthusiasm.

The creative energy behind Black River’s social media presence comes from the lab’s Sales/Social Media Representative, Elise Ellis. In one of her blog posts from January of 2011, she poses these questions about photography: “Are you shooting from your heart? Are you having fun? Are you shooting what you like to shoot?

Later in the same post, Ellis describes how to authentically define your own style. Although she was writing about photography, her comments could apply equally well to how she approaches posting on Facebook and blogging.

“You have to be authentically you when defining your style. You can’t be someone else. Emulating someone else will not get you far in the photographic world. But being the best ‘you’ you can be will. Clients, potential clients, past clients will all recognize the disconnect that is happening within yourself when you are not being who you are meant to be. It will come through in your work. It will come through in your daily life in the form of unhappiness and upset. Finding the one thing that you get all excited about photographing will help you to begin developing your personal style.”

I believe this is great advice for photography, blogging and just about everything else in life!

How sincere does your company sound on Facebook?

Are you posting from your heart?

Are you having fun?

Retweet or Retire?

 I recently listened as a sales executive described the difficulty that she is having in filling an open sales position. Her company is in a period of transition as they replace a simple and declining set of products with more complex products requiring technical understanding. She had interviewed a number of personable candidates with industry experience, but when she discussed the changes happening in her industry, they were lost with a “deer in the headlights” look.

Are experienced sales and management professionals and making themselves unemployable by refusing to embrace current business and communication methods? In today’s world, all but the most basic products are software driven and impacted by network and web connections in some manner.  A sales lead is more likely to come from a text message, Tweet, LinkedIn connection, Facebook chat or an email than through a telephone call.

Many younger workers are digital natives who embrace new technologies without fear or hesitation because they have used similar tools their entire life.  Many other people have jumped in with enthusiasm to learn and master a connected lifestyle. But what happens to those who don’t bother to keep their skills up to date.

During the 1990s, a website became a litmus test for the viability of a “real company.”  A company that didn’t have a nice website of their own was considered suspect, too small to be of any real importance.  We may be on the verge of a similar test for individuals.  Is a person who doesn’t have a complete LinkedIn profile too out of touch to employ? Is hiring someone in the 21st century without strong social network skills analogous to hiring someone in the 20th century who couldn’t use a telephone.

It’s usually not difficult to stay up to date on the latest technologies in your own industry. And the most popular social networking sites are free.  It really boils down to making a decision and a commitment.

In what areas are you falling behind the times?  What is your plan for catching up?

Flipboard Fanatic

I am a Flipboard Fanatic.  

Flipboard is a free app for the iPad that aggregates your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader feeds into fast, fun and easy-to-navigate electronic magazine. If your work or hobbies involve research, this app will change your life.

Back in February, I posted The Blogosphere and Twitterverse which advocated letting your friends on Facebook and Twitter find information for you. By following the right people, you can discover interesting trends and identify opportunities before they reach the mainstream news.  On the other hand, following a Twitter timeline filled with cryptic comments on indiscernible links is a tedious task.

Flipboard exposes your Twitter content by opening each link and displaying a few paragraphs of each article in attractive magazine style pages with four or five article per page. Photo links are also opened and the photos are interspersed with the articles on each page.  Touching any article opens up the full article and the option to open the original source.

Flipboard also makes it easy to join the conversation. You can like, comment and share content on Facebook or Tweet, reTweet or quote Tweets on Twitter. Since the app aggregates content from your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader feeds, it is a great way to share content discovered in one stream with your friends in another.

Although this post reads a little like advertising copy for Flipboard, I have no association with the company.  I am just a big fan.

What are your experiences with Flipboard?  What iPad app have you found to be life changing?

The Blogosphere and Twitterverse

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites make it easy and fun to follow the most innovative thinkers in any field.  The best information is in the blogs, but your friends on Twitter and Facebook will help you find it.

Over the past decade, blogs have evolved from online journals into a mainstream publishing tool. There are more than 125 million separate blogs and highly creative people are some of the most prolific bloggers. Whatever your interests, someone is blogging about it and some of the blogs are excellent.  Bloggers are typically the most educated and passionate people in their field.

Several sites, including Technorati.com index blogs and this is a good way to initially find some blogs to follow.  Many professional journalists and professional writers are also bloggers. So when you read a great book or an interesting magazine column, be sure to check out the author’s blog. Bloggers also tend to follow and comment on other blogs, so an interesting comment may link to a new source of knowledge and inspiration.

When you are following several blogs, it quickly becomes unwieldy to visit each site individually to discover if it has been updated.  Set up an RSS reader page and use the RSS button at each blog site to set up an automatic headline feed to your reader.  That makes it easy to spend only a few minutes each day to see which blogs have been updated and decide which articles you want to read.

Searching on Technorati.com and reviewing RSS feeds are good sources of information.  Your friends are a better source. Who are the most interesting people you know?  Chances are, they are interesting online as well.  People who are intellectually curious have a talent for finding interesting information and sharing links to it on their own Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn pages. If you follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook, or contact them on LinkedIn, they become your news sources and news filters.

Twitter is the best way to find new sources of information because most Twitter users allow anyone to follow them and the “retweet” feature makes it easy for people to share the most interesting tweets.  When one of the people you follow retweets something interesting, you can choose to follow the original tweeter to gain more of their insights.  If it turns out that someone you follow generates a lot of useless or uninteresting tweets, it is easy to unfollow them.

This process works in both directions.  When you find a particularly interesting article, share the link on your page.  Your friends will appreciate it, and if they share it too, it might bring you new followers which you can choose to follow yourself.

It is important to set aside time every day to follow your social networks and read the best blogs in your field.  Then turn everything off before beginning your real creative work . Focus your full attention on your own project.

What are your favorite blogs?  How do you keep track of the latest trends?