Honestly, I should have posted this at least a week ago as we are now 10 days into the World Cup. For some reason, even though I love soccer, I wasn’t that excited leading up to it. I’m not really sure why.

But now that’s here I want to watch every match. Of course, I don’t but I’m trying to see as many as I can. It’s going to be a long month ;-)

There are a number of great resources for following the World Cup matches on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter

Twitter has been having some issues recently (my tweet count has decreased by over 11,000 tweets – while not a big deal I do hope they return) and the World Cup traffic is causing a lot of “fail whales”. While the World Cup is not such a big deal here in the US, it is around the world and a lot of people are watching and tweeting about it.

1. Following the hashtag #worldcup is a great way to keep up with all of the matches and latest information.
2. Tweetbeat has an excellent World Cup page. It has tweets, news headlines, a countdown to the next match, and teams and groupings. If you want to follow the tweets about a specific team you can filter by that. (Go Spain!!)
   
3. Twitter / World Cup 2010 – Twitter has a page set up for the World Cup too. It contains overall tweets and you can also filter by specific countries.
   

Facebook

Pages

1. World Cup 2010 – Soccer Jones – Good resource for all World Cup news.
2. World Cup on ESPN – ESPN is actually showing ALL of the matches in the US and has really gotten into the World Cup on their Facebook page. They have a list of matches, a Team Selector, where you can pick and follow your favorite teams, and Matches, Team Selector and Game Face. Game Face will allow you to paint the face on a photo or Facebook avatar and add you favorite team’s flag.
   
3. FourFourTwo – FourFourTwo is a soccer magazine from the UK and are good for following the World Cup on Facebook and soccer ALL the time.
4. Team and Player Fan Pages – you can search for fan pages for your favorite teams and players. Of course, I’ve added Spain and Iker Casillas ;-)

Applications

1. Goal Leaderboard – On the Leaderboard you can find out which teams have the most fans on Facebook and follow and support your team
   
2. Badges – Add the badge of your favorite team to your Facebook profile. right now I have one for Spain and another for Aston Villa.
   
3. Support the World Cup Charity – 1Goal – 1Goal is the World Cup charity. They want to provide education for 72 million children worldwide by 2015.
4. FIFA Superstars – This is a fantasy sports application in which you can create your own team and see how well they do based on how players do in the World Cup matches.

Unlike the World Series, the World Cup really does involve the entire world. Are you watching any of the matches? If so, who are you supporting?

photo credit: Axel Bührmann

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Following the World Cup on Facebook and Twitter

Well, this can be filed in the “what took you so long” category, but flickr finally has a twitter account and has finally created the functionality for integrating flickr uploads with your twitter account.

The twitter account for flickr is brand new but hopefully it will be used to interact with others. Currently there are just a handful of tweets. And so far, flickr hasn’t followed anyone back. They don’t have to, of course, but that is generally the best way to interact with other users.

In order to get started you need to authorize twitter as a valid application in your flickr account. This is done by adding twitter as a blog page under your account settings.

1. Go to http://www.flickr.com/account/blogs/
2. Click on Add Another Blog
3. In the drop down list, select Twitter
   
4. Click on the big button that says “Go To Twitter To Authorize”
5. Click on Allow
6. Once you click on the Allow button, you will be redirected to flickr and given instructions on how to use the feature
7. Flickr provides users with an email address that allows them to post photos via a mobile device. I use this to send photos to flickr directly from my phone just like sending any text message. Once twitter is authorized you are given another email address that allows you to post the photo to flickr and send a tweet with a link to the same photo. What you place in the subject line of the email or photo text message, will be the name of the photo on flickr and the tweet sent to twitter.
8. You can also send a link to any photo on flickr by clicking the Blog This button and selecting twitter from the list, if you have more than just twitter listed.
   
9. If you don’t want to use the service, you can deauthorize the integration at any time

What do you think? Is this useful? I frequently send photos to flickr directly from my phone. Actually, I rarely use a camera to take photos – I always have my phone with me but I don’t always have my camera. Rarely though do I have the need to send a tweet of the photo at the same time. The Blog This button could be useful though, especially if a funny or unusual photo is located.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Integrate Twitter and Flickr

Many people who use Twitter and Facebook use the Twitter Facebook Application to update their facebook status. The facebook status is populated by every tweet except @ messages and direct messages. Even RT (retweets) show up as the facebook status.

I used to use this application. But I stopped. And if you do this, I think you should stop too. I’m going to tell you why. If updating your facebook status manually is too much bother, then I’ll offer an alternative facebook application.

When you use the twitter application to update your facebook status, almost every tweet except an @ reply, updates your facebook status. I used to use this but realized that it wasn’t working effectively and started updating my status manually.

1. If I send a lot of tweets in a short time period then my facebook status updates quickly. Am I really that busy? Is every tweet I send interesting on facebook. Probably not. Alternatively, I could make sure that my tweets are appropriate as a facebook status but then I am censoring myself on one platform for the sake of another and am no longer using twitter to an effective communication tool.
2. I don’t know about you but a lot of my friends on facebook don’t use twitter. My frequent status updates and retweets made no sense to them at all. It was like I was discussing a topic in one location and then broadcasting it to others who weren’t participating in the conversation.
3. And does it really take me that long to update my facebook status manually? No. And I don’t even have to login to do it – I can set us SMS for my account and update my status via my cellphone.

Occasionally my twitter and facebook updates will be in sync. I might think something is especially funny and want to share it in both locations or I might really excited about a football (soccer) match. But generally I have different messages for each platform.

If you feel that you must integrate twitter and facebook, then I recommend an alternative application. It’s called Selective Twitter Status. Only tweets that you end with #fb will update your facebook status. The rest of your tweets will just stay with Twitter.

Do you use Twitter and Facebook? Do you update your Facebook status via Twitter? Have any of your facebook friends who don’t use twitter ever complained about this? Do you think selective status is a better solution? I’m still going to update manually but I do think it’s a better solution.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Twitter and Facebook Integration: Stop Making Every Tweet Your Facebook Status

Did you know your twitter profile page has a page rank? I didn’t realize this until this week when someone tweeted about it. I access twitter via tweetdeck so I rarely see the site or my profile page.

So, I went to check the rank of my profile page and was really surprised by the results.

The page rank of my twitter profile page is 5!! My site is only a 3.

Are there more quality links to my profile page? Does it contain better content? Am I better known for twitter than for my blog?

Perhaps this video will provide some enlightenment. Google explains the factors involved in determining the page rank of a twitter profile page. According to google it has nothing to do with the number of followers you have but it my spot tests, profiles of people with more followers tend to have a higher page rank. This could just be a coincidence based on the people I chose to test.

So, what do you think? Did you know your profile page had a page rank? Do you even care? ;-)

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Page Rank on Twitter Profile Page

Now that Spring is almost here I’ve discussed WordPress spring cleaning and found a couple of spring WordPress themes.

I’ve also noticed that the birds are starting to return (the pigeons stay year round). I like birds ok but I frequently wonder what they are so happy about at 5am. At that point I feel like cursing them. And this leads us into today’s post.

If cursing or swearing offends you, then you will probably want to stop reading now. You’ve been warned.

While I swear quite a bit in real life, I try not to online. I am frequently amazed at how casually certain words are used online, especially on twitter. Tweets and almost everything done online is being indexed by search engines so I would think people would use a little more discretion. Unless, of course, swearing is part of your online persona.

Well, now we have Cursebird, which tracks and has a live stream of all swearing on Twitter. You can also search on a username and get their cursing score.

And to prove that I really don’t swear online here is my cursebird score.

You can compare this to my friend @chrissmari ‘s score.

I like viewing the live stream when I am grumpy. I don’t know but something about all the silly swearing just makes me laugh.

How about you? Are you a goody-goody like me? Or are you more extreme?

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Cursebird: A Twitter App to Track Swearing

A couple of months ago I wrote about how to find freelance work on twitter. This article is similar but different. I am going to discuss how you can use twitter to assist in your job search. This isn’t for freelance work but is for regular job searches. When I started researching this article I was amazed at the number of resources I found – I didn’t expect there to be so much out there.

Not only will this article contain individuals and job search sites to follow but will also include online job searching resources that have a presence on twitter.

And I think that since the economy is totally falling apart that we can use every advantage when searching for a new position.

Job Search Databases Designed for Twitter

1. TwitHire – is a job posting board that also posts to twitter. You can search for jobs on the website and you can also follow @twithire to receive notifications of new postings. If you have an available position, you can post it here as well.
2. Job Shouts – is the free job board that tweets. You can search the job board and follow @jobshouts on twitter. More types of jobs are available then on twithire. I’ve been following for my research and a lot of jobs are sent through twitter. I would love to be able to filter them by location.

Search on JobTip Hashtag

1. #jobtip – You can search on the #jobtip hashtag to find all the latest tweets containing, yes you guessed it, job tips.

Job Postings and Resources to Follow on Twitter

1. http://twitter.com/authenticjobs – Jobs for Web and Creative Professionals
2. http://twitter.com/indeed – “Indeed.com includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages – and we continue to add new sites every day.”
3. http://twitter.com/libgig_jobs – Jobs for Librarians
4. http://twitter.com/medical_jobs – Medical Job Postings
5. http://twitter.com/monstercareers – Career Advice and Discussions
6. http://twitter.com/simplyhired – Job Search Database
7. http://twitter.com/socialmediajob – Jobs in Social Media
8. http://twitter.com/wordpressjob – Aggregates all WordPress related jobs into a single feed.
9. http://twitter.com/Web_Design_Jobs – Web Design and other Graphics Jobs
10. http://twitter.com/wahm_job_leads – Work at Home Mom Job Leads – Please note that most of these jobs are pulled from Freelance bidding sites such as Get A Freelancer. Some of the jobs are good and others are really really bad.
11. http://twitter.com/Joblighted – A tech job aggregator
12. http://twitter.com/linkup – The twitter stream for LinkUp, a job search engine that searches posting on company websites.
13. http://twitter.com/coolworks – Seasonal job listings for places like Yosemite.
14. http://twitter.com/smjobwire – More social media job listings
15. http://twitter.com/usmusicjobs – Listings for jobs in the music industry
16. http://twitter.com/JobAngels – A pay it forward type of movement where you help one person find a job.
17. http://twitter.com/themediaishirin – Helping laid off media professionals locate new positions.
18. http://twitter.com/sfmobilejobs Mobile Web and Digital Media positions in the Silicon Valley

Job Searching Advice

1. http://twitter.com/jacobshare – Job Search Advice
2. http://twitter.com/theonlinebeat – Online Job Search Resource
3. http://twitter.com/alisondoyle – About.com Job Search Guide
4. http://twitter.com/RecruiterMoe – Online Recruiter
5. http://twitter.com/GLHoffman – Author of Dig Your Job

Just for Fun

1. http://twitter.com/jobsnob – Poking fun at silly things found on resumes and job applications.

Do you have any twitter job resources to add to this list? Do you think Twitter can be a useful tool for job hunting?

photo credit: supertobor

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How Twitter Can Assist You With Your Job Search

Well, I am very behind as I was out of town a couple of days longer than I originally planned. I thought I would enjoy limited Internet and cell phone access but it was really hard.

I also has a very difficult trip, which I might discuss tomorrow, and it’s going to take me a bit to get back into my normal routine.

Anyway ….

The winner of the Twitter Holiday Contest is…

Rebecca from Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat. Ironically enough, Rebecca was also the very first person to enter the contest. I will be emailing Rebecca and the other entrants later today.

photo credit: amanky

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Happy New Year!! … And the Winner Is

• Read Twice, Post Once – I only discovered Tracy and her site in the last couple of weeks and it’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite visits for a good laugh. Plus, Tracy is really nice. If you are famous for putting your foot in your mouth or know someone is, you are sure to enjoy this article.
• Fire Meets Desire – Love the smell of flame broiled hamburgers? Well, who doesn’t. You can buy Burger King’s new cologne, Flame. This site has to be one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. Make sure you click the cologne bottle 4 times to get the full effect.
• Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger – I was glad to come across this article because I’ve come across more and more people claiming to be social media experts and gurus. This list will help us discern if they are the real deal or not.
• A Journey Through Five Years of WordPress Interface – 5 years of WordPress and the interface changes over the years. It’s come a long way and I think 2.7 is the best by far.
• Nothing Tweeter than Twitter – Jaculynn Peterson’s list of funny tweets. And look! There I am. I guess I’m funny …
• The Perfect Christmas Gift – There are still a couple of shopping days until Christmas. If you are stuck on what to get your loved ones, maybe these Christmas ads from the 50′s will provide inspiration.
• And finally, a malfunctioning dog.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social-Lists 12/21/08

It’s the holiday season and since I’m not a total grinch, I’m offering a holiday contest. One lucky person will win a free upgrade to 2.7 or a new installation if not already using WordPress, worth $50-$75.

But wait – there’s more.

Everyone else who enters the contest will also win!

How can this be? All other entrants will win $10 off an upgrade, if the upgrade is scheduled within 30 days of the closing of the contest.

Here’s what you gotta do.

1. Tweet about the contest.
   

   “Win a free WordPress 2.7 upgrade from @kwbridge http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/twitter-holiday-contest-win-a-free-27-upgrade”

   To make it even easier, you can click here.

2. Comment here with a link to your tweet.
3. Contest closes December 25, 2008. Comments will be closed at that time.
4. Winner will be selected at random by my brother while I am visiting in Vermont.
5. Winner will be announced on this site on January 1, 2009 and notified by email.
6. All entrants will be emailed with a instructions for claiming $10 off and the deadline for scheduling.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do

Notes and Disclaimers:

1. If you are using a premium theme, such as Thesis, you may need to wait for your theme to be upgraded before WordPress can be upgraded to 2.7
2. Plugins and usage can cause upgrade problems. This will be evaluated in advance.
3. If there are a lot of entries, I will obviously not be able to upgrade everyone at the same time so scheduling will be based on my own schedule
4. $10 off other services may be substituted at my own discretion. For example, if you have already upgraded to 2.7 but would like assistance updating your comment form to take advantage of threaded comments, this can be discussed. All discussions about substitutions must be done privately via email and not in the comment thread.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Twitter Holiday Contest – Win a Free 2.7 Upgrade

• I’m Not A Bloody Fortune Teller But…. – Business advice from Cath Lawson that you help you start 2009 on the right foot. Just remember, it doesn’t matter what you stick up the turkey’s butt.
• What’s in it for Your Followers? How to be Useful on Twitter – Tips for providing value on Twitter. Make sure, however, that you don’t let people take advantage of you.
• Social Media Etiquette Handbook – I don’t agree with everything in this guide but it’s a great guide to social media etiquette on Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed.
• A Simple Guide to Compiling a Free E-Book – Joanna Young’s guide to compiling a free eBook. It’s simple and it covers it all.
• Coffee Shortage in 2009 – I’ve been hoping for a better year in 2009 but with a coffee shortage I don’t think it’s going to be. ;-)

A funny video from Tim Brownson of A Daring Adventure, in which he shares with us 10 ways to be miserable.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social-Lists 12/14/08