Beyond Craigslist: 50 Other Sites to Buy, Rent, or Snag Goods (and Get Cool Free Stuff) | Free Geekery

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How Much Social Media Can You Handle?

Here is a great article about the Social Internet World. If you are thinking about doing some socialization on the web below are the sites to start with. If you have any questions about using them let me know.

by Jacob Morgan

I’m not going to even try to speculate on the amount of social media companies out there. Nor am I going to try to guess on the niche markets that have already been penetrated. All I am going to say is that there are a lot of social media companies out there, and the number of niche plays are slowly dwindling down. So, this begs the question, how much social media can you handle?

I’ll start off by divulging the social media platforms that I use and what I use them for:

Linkedin:

Great for networking and making business connections. I find the question and answer feature especially valuable. I put my linkedin profile link on my blog and sometimes on my business cards. This make it easy for anyone to find out a bit more about my professional and educational background.

Facebook:

Also good for networking, however I find that linkedin is a bit more professional, that is just my opinion. I do find facebook rather useful when it comes time to find out about new events that I should attend since they appear in my friend stream. I also use the post item feature to share links with my friends. Of course there is also the random play and fun.

Twitter:

Twitter has been a very valuable resource for me, I have met a lot of my twitter friends, OFFLINE, via events, conferences, etc. Twitter is almost like a world wide chat conversation. I get a lot of tech news from twitter as well as relevant event information. I also use twitter to share links with my followers and of course engage in discussion. I love the immediate response, it’s like having access to your own personal information group, very valuable indeed.

Digg:

The only thing I really use dig for is sharing links and blog posts, I wouldn’t call it a must have tool, but I have definitely gained a few readers from sharing my posts. I use it about 1-2 times a week. Whereas the others I use daily.

Plurk:

I can’t say that I have really been using plurk that much, but ever since my plurk post a few weeks ago I have been getting friend requests and have decided to try it out. I am still much more active on twitter, but I do plurk every now and then.

I would say that the above 5 are my most active social media platforms, sometimes I poke around on friendfeed, but not that often. Out of the above 5 I would only consider linkedin, facebook, and twitter, to be my most active social media platforms. Now, it’s not because I don’t like the other great platforms out there, it’s because I can’t handle anymore. How many different friend groups, friends, passwords, usernames, etc. can you possible have? Am I supposed to log into 10 different social media platforms every day to check for updates? I’d never leave the house!

So, what does this mean for the social media world? Well, simply put there are two choices. Either, something like friendfeed is going to figure out a way to aggregate all of a users social media streams into one, or, we are going to continue to see a segmentation of social media platforms and users. What social media platforms do you use and why?

We are at a crucial stage of social media evolution, the only question is, what are we going to evolve to?

Thanks for reading

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iTunes Store: 5B Songs Sold, Now Pushing 50K Movies Daily

The ascent of the iTunes Store has been consistently touted as industry-changing, and not without reason. In the past five years, the Web-based marketplace for downloadable media has gone from startup size to one which, not very long after launch, began to tally sales in the billions, and soon made its big media partners grow hesitant of its influence on music sales and associated pricing controls.

Despite the music industry’s overt promotion of competitors, however, the iTunes Store has remained the biggest selling online storefront in the digital market. And today Apple is heralding one more milestone in the growth of the iTunes Store, marking the passage of the five-billionth song sold. There’s really no mystery as to why the iTunes Store continues to be the outstanding leader in the digital download arena. The company’s iTunes-plus-iPod/iPhone infrastructure still greatly simplifies media consumption, arguably more so than any other competitor.

The retailer often recognized as the next most substantial force in digital music sales, Amazon, has made remarkable headway in its effort to encroach on Apple’s dominance, but though the majority of the iTunes song catalog has been relegated to a technologically unappealing position laden with DRM and distributed with inferior audio quality, the storefront moves forth apace.

What’s more, Apple has today also divulged that the iTunes Store, following its recent introduction of movie purchases and rental options for newly released titles from several Hollywood studios, is now regularly distributing over 50,000 movies per day. Surely, if one were to juxtapose that figure against Netflix’s own statistics one might sense iTunes to be a virtual non-competitor. But placed against the budding market of download centers, which includes, among others, Amazon Unbox, Apple claims iTunes to be “the world’s most popular online movie store.”

Apple does not explicitly state an independent market researcher for its daily movie download figure, but suffice it to say that the figure of 50,000+ will gain perhaps as much attention as that recorded for sales of audio tracks upon further scrutiny. Movie downloads are an increasingly hot topic for market analysts, given the amount of piracy conducted over the Web, as well as in physical form. And with ISPs’ concerns over network data traffic, plus the costs required for consumers to opt into the habit of downloading movies on-demand from non-cable or satellite providers, many observers will likely peg iTunes first official statistic for movie sales and rentals as either good news or bad for the fate of the premium video download movement.

The movement presently involves material from film studios, television networks, and independent, Internet-born producers. Theoretically speaking, 50,000 movie rentals and purchases per day would amount to 18.25 million if maintained for an entire year, give or take any fluctuations in demand.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Is iTunes Losing All its Music? Warner May Follow Universal’s Lead
Starz to Launch on iTunes
Apple Movie Rentals On its Way?
iTunes UK To Soon Launch Movie Sales And Rentals
AC/DC Sells Music through Verizon–Not iTunes
Universal Music May Drop iTunes Contract
Apple Lands Deal with MGM

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FLIP Camera

I received an early Father's Day gift last night. The FLIP camera. It is portable video camera that can record for 60 minutes. Read more about the camera here - http://theflip.com

Here is Ray on my new FLIP camera.

More is Less

I have been on both side of the interview fence many times. When I was in between jobs I was the interviewee and as a hiring manager the interviewer. The one thing I can tell you is that candidates don't understand the concept of listening. The individual is more focused on selling themselves to you that the sales pitch is non stop. As the title says less is more. To quote the movie Jerry McGuire in many cases during the interview the candidate has me at hello. Then the more they talk the less engaging they become.

I realize it is very competitive today. If I can pass along a small tip that will go along way is to be selective when responding to questions. Make sure the answers are clear and concise. You may just talk yourself out of a job.

starting up again

It's been a long time since I posted. I decided in 2008 to simplify my life. I slowed down the social networking and focused more on email and my favorite rss feeds. Also with my new job at the AP and life at home with the girls it has been crazy.

I have decided to start posting when I can again. I did miss it. I have good news to share with everyone. We are expecting our third child in July and the baby is not a girl. Wow I can make a boy. My time management skills are poor now they sure need to improve with a third child on the way

I would love to hear from old and new friends. Drop a comment or an email.