Mister Wong and me

While trying to fight with the WordPress blog settings - this is the newest entry in my always expanding media empire, and will share more about this soon - I discovered Mister Wong. What it is the connection: as I am trying to build a blog hosted by a German website, this Mister was recommended as a link to be used for sharing the latest updates. By curiosity, went on Google for a complex search and was happy to get in touch with the German site for social bookmarking. You can save all your favorite websites to your personal account and share it with other people from your network. The site is a direct competitor to del.icio.us and have the advantage of focusing exclusively on the German speaking realm. Recently, there were launched versions in Russian and Chinese. Equally, you can benefit of mobile support, accessing your account and saving your links of interest directly from your cellphone.

You can connect via icq, Skype, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, to access a FreeDigital Library. As privacy is a permanent matter of concern in Germany, the site is offering you the possibility to chose if you want to have your profile private or/and public. Also, you can access a Free Digital Library.

I am wondering if it is any similar website in French - as my blog I will start soon - when WordPress will be kind enough to share its secrets with me?

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• Are you networking effectively? (snfornewbies.com)

The future of e-mail

I just realized a couple of days ago how useful for me - with not too much time and lots of new and old projects to work on - is the use of the social networks, in comparison with the classical system of the messenger/e-mail.

I have all the people I need for certain purposes - online - I can talk with them and instantly send messages, while checking periodically about news on topics and subjects I am interested in. The newspapers I am fan of, or the other groups I added on my profile are providing me the necessary updates for what I should read. Plus, from time to time, I have also the occasion to make a bit of fun, while seeing some funny posts and other remarks from more or less virtual friends about various posts.

Of course, in some cases, it is embarassing and disturbing to be able to follow fully this hectic environment. Some friends are excessively busy with their virtual farms, aquariums and mafia wars. But, in time, you develop the selective capacity to select the people you could have a valuable virtual or realtime conversation. As in real life, in fact.

My question is for how long we will consider efficient to keep our yahoo e-mail accounts instead of choosing a larger platform for communication, as Facebook. Recently, yahoo introduced also the possibility to create networks and to keep a certain level of interaction with your friends, via various updates - I always wondered why only now, as long as hotmail, for example, is using this system of years already. But still, we are far of the high level of interactivity offered by the usual social networks.

In addition, e-mail and social networking are directly interconnected: for a couple of months already, Facebook and Hotmail make possible the sharing of updates of statuses, images or videos.

So, given the current technological directions, it is more likely that, sooner or later - it could be count in the matter of months in some cases, as the evolution of the social networking showed already - using only the e-mail will become as obsolete as are now, for example, the yahoo groups.

Update your Status

How much does your status tell about you? And why should it be important to have any status details?
Started to ask myself recently, after observing that even yahoo messenger - in my opinion, one of the most conservative communication platform - introduced the "status" opportunity.
Finding the right and creative recommendations about yourself it is not easy. Some of us simply are unable to write fluently or to have new and astonishing ideas at every moment. Some of us don't travel, don't go to movies or theater and don't fall in love each day. Others simply don't find a reason to share their daily schedule step-by-step with the others. So, for them, the status update issue - obsessively present in Facebook under the question :"What's in your mind?" - for me, at last once, the temptation was to simply answer this, considering it is not the smarties suggestion to improve your personal creativity; maybe, for example, my mind is blank, but still alive etc. - is non-sense.
For commercial purposes, the advantages are quite interesting, because you could keep away a broad area of consumers - real or potential - with news, updates about new ideas and permanent repositioning under various angles. At least in one point, a lesson to be learned for the personal communications: branding yourself is just putting into light what do you consider are the strong point and what is defining you better. Should we all became experts in personal branding? Not automatically, but the mechanism according to which we are organizing our communications are most likely to have more to do with this. Or, at least, to offer as broader opportunities to better know ourselves. And, of course, to better make choices in terms of friends or people part of our direct community. For better sharing common thoughts, concerns and joys. In fact, these new communication tools are not so neutral, depersonalizing as we thought first.