Maria’s Guides

Is yours saying what you really want to say?

I’m a member of several social networking services: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, etc.

All social networks have the same idea when it comes to setting up your account. You provide information about yourself in a “bio.” The maximum length of a bio can vary from site to site. Twitter, on the low end, allows only 160 characters. LinkedIn has no maximum length. Other services fit in between.

Your bio is your primary way to tell people who don’t know you what you’re all about. If they’re heard about you from someone else or stumbled upon one of your Twitter tweets or Facebook wall posts, they might be interested in learning more. They might even want to become your . . . wait for it . . . friend.

Whatever.

The point is, they’ll start with your bio to learn more about you, so it’s in your best interest to create a good one.

Here are some tips for creating an online bio for social networking:

• Be brief. This is required on Twitter, which allows only 160 characters. As such, you’ll need to keep the text tight and specific. Lists usually work well here. Even if the service allows longer bios, don’t get carried away. Start off with the basics — the “must-know” info about you. Then expand in additional paragraphs. Nobody is going to slog through hundreds of words just to decide whether you’re someone they want to follow or be friends with.
• Be accurate. Include the things that are important to you, keeping in mind the audience of the social networking service. The things you put on a Twitter or Facebook bio are likely to be very different from the ones you put in a LinkedIn bio, since the services are set up for different purposes. Don’t make stuff up. If you have to make up things about who you are, you really need to step away from the computer and get a life.
• Be meaningful. Sure, lots of folks think it’s cute or cool to have a one-line bio with some spiffy saying, possibly snatched from a punch line in a movie. If a movie-one liner describes you to a stranger, I’m impressed by the shallowness of your character. The folks I want to know tend to be a bit deeper.
• Be aware of turn-off words. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be friends with anyone who is a self-proclaimed guru or expert. These are words that other people should apply to you — not words you apply to yourself. Other turn-off words vary from person to person. If you are a woman and describe yourself as “sexy,” a heterosexual woman like me is not going to be impressed. But a teenaged boy or a lesbian might.
• Be aware of providing too much personal information. Do we need to know that you’re rebuilding your life after a divorce? Or that you’re a recovered alcoholic? And while you might be proud to be a “Christ follower,” when you include that in your bio, you shouldn’t expect to make many friends with people who aren’t fundamentalist Christians or not religious at all.

Think of your bio as bait on a fishing line. Who will it attract? But, at the same time, how many people will ultimately be disappointed by the mismatch between what your bio says about you and who you really are?

What do you like or hate about things people put in their social networking bios? Use the comments for this post to share your thoughts.

Get ‘em straight! Use ‘em right!

I’ve been a Twitter user for about two years now and seen enormous growth in this social networking phenomena.

One of the things I’ve noticed lately, however, is that newcomers often have trouble distinguishing between the two methods available for addressing a tweet to a specific user. I hope to clear up some of the confusion with this brief article.

@Replies

An @reply (pronounced at reply) is a public communication to a specific person on Twitter.

It has a rigid format. It begins with the @ symbol followed immediately (without a space) by the account name of the Twitter user you’re addressing it to. This must be the very beginning of the update or tweet — if it’s buried within the tweet, it won’t go onto the recipient’s @Replies page on Twitter or be specially identified in third party clients like Twitterrific and TweetDeck.

So, for example, an @reply to me would look something like this when composed:

@mlanger Great post about the difference between @replies and DMs!

You use an @reply when you want to reply to an update made by another Twitter user or send an update directly to a Twitter user. In either case, the update is public — it appears on the Everyone (Public) Timeline and it could appear to your followers, depending on how their @reply notices are set.

@replies are what make conversations in Twitter. One user tweets, another user replies. The first user replies again. Perhaps a third user joins in. By correctly using @replies, you can interact with other Twitter users publicly, in a way that’s effective — and might get you new followers.

Direct Messages

A direct messages or DM is a private communication to a specific person on Twitter.

A DM also has a rigid format. It begins with the letter d followed immediately by a single space and the account name of the Twitter user you’re addressing it to. This must be at the very beginning of the update or tweet — if it’s buried within the tweet or not formatted correctly, it will be published as a regular tweet. It might look like this when composed:

d mlanger Give me a call about flying next Tuesday. My number is 602-000-0000.

DMs are special on Twitter:

• DMs do not appear in the everyone or public timeline.
• DMs appear in the sender’s and recipient’s Direct Messages page. They’re on the sender’s Sent tab and the recipients Inbox tab:
  
• You cannot send a DM to someone who does not follow you.
• If you have device updates enabled, DMs addressed to you are sent to your device, even if device updates are not enabled for the sender.
• You cannot use Twitter’s Reply button to reply to a DM with an @reply. This is usually true with third party Twitter clients, too.

DMs are private, but they’re not secure. Don’t use DMs — or any other online communication method, for that matter — to share content you must keep private, such as personal or banking information.

Which to Use?

This may be what confuses new users the most. Which method of addressing another Twitter user should you use?

I believe there are two points to take into consideration:

• If the tweet is of a private nature and you don’t want it seen by other Twitter users, make it a DM. Similarly, if it’s of a public nature and you’re inviting other Twitter users to join in on the conversation, make it an @reply.
• If the tweet is part of a lengthy exchange between you and one other Twitter user and no one else seems interested in joining in, you might want to move it to a DM discussion.

What do you think? Use the comments for this post to share your point of view.

Information from Software Update.

This Front Row update provides improved iTunes 8.1 compatibility.

Information from Software Update.

iTunes 8.1 is now faster and more responsive. You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing.

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides many other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

For information on the security content of this update, visit http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Information from Software Update.

This update includes general fixes and compatibility updates for the following applications: AirPort Utility and AirPort Base Station Agent, including AirPort Disk Utility for Tiger.

Information from Software Update.

This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues. It is recommended for all users of Aperture, iLife ’09, and iWork ’09.