Bwana.org » social media

Empire Avenue – Just Plain Fun

Bwana — Sat, 07 May 2011 12:07:54 +0000

Recently, I was invited to a service that I heard about a while ago, but for some reason I dismissed it. The service is called Empire Avenue, and I think it’s quite a bit of fun.

Empire Avenue is the Social Media Exchange, where you can invest in any social media profile by buying their shares, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free!

A long, long time ago, in an internet far, far away, I participated in a very similar site called Blogshares, which did similar techniques to promote websites. Empire Avenue (EAv for short) takes it a step further by throwing in achievements, and encourages you to contribute to your connected social networking services. Our community has started playing around with EAv, and quite a few of us are taken by how fun it is. I’ve been criticized by you all that I don’t communicate to my audience enough unless something is broken. I can’t say I disagree with you there, but something like EAv gives me a bit more motivation to tweet to everyone that I’m doing a show soon, or to communicate the latest promotion – You know, that thing called “social media”?

At any rate, I doubt the game is for everyone and I think a lot of you out there will probably dismiss it as a gimmick or a waste of time. As for me, I’m going to be buying some shares of (e)PIRILLO as soon as I get the chance. Perhaps I can convince (e)OREO to lower their prices a bit. If you wish to join, please visit http://bwna.me/empavenue to give me and you 10,000 “Eaves”, which is their virtual currency.

I’m listed as (e)BWANA on EAv. Surprised?

P.S. If you do decide to sign up, I highly recommend getting a cup of coffee and a few cookies. After you smile a bit, read Chris Pirillo’s THOROUGH EAv guide here. You’ll be glad you did

Guest Host On TPN Weekly Episode 3

Official Google Buzz Buttons Available

Bwana — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:49:07 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m on Google Buzz more than any other social network lately. So I was happy to see the announcement by Google:

We’ve seen lots of people using Google Buzz to share interesting links from around the web. To do so, you had to copy and paste the link from one browser window to another — there weren’t buttons that made it easy to post to Google Buzz without leaving the site you’re on. Savvy sites like Mashable and TechCrunch quickly got creative and implemented their own Buzz buttons, using Google Reader as the backend. But not every site owner should have to hack together their own version of these buttons (and not everyone who uses Buzz also uses Reader), so this morning we’re making copy-and-paste Buzz buttons available for anyone to use.

I’m updating my sites now to include this button and if you are a user of Google Buzz, I encourage you to share my posts to Buzz.

Get your Google Buzz buttons here.

FriendFeed Still Reigns As Conversation King

Bwana — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:12:09 +0000

Today, I found yet another reason why I prefer discussing tech topics on FriendFeed over another popular social site, Twitter.

FriendFeed’s search is a big reason why you should move your Twitter conversations there. The above example shows the value in retaining search data. Twitter search only goes back a few days (I don’t know how many exactly, but it’s not that much) while FriendFeed retains much more data.

If you find yourself in need of data retrieval, I hope your data resides on FriendFeed. So how do you take advantage of this? It’s actually quite simple. You simply post a new FriendFeed entry and “CC Twitter”.

This will broadcast your your new topic to all your Twitter followers, and invite them to join the conversation on FriendFeed with a link. Some people hate this because they have to click through and go to yet another web page. Part of me understands this frustration in this “right now, do it yesterday” atmosphere, but the payoff is tremendous. Not only do you get a rich, single threaded conversation out of the deal, but the contents will be searchable a year from now. You can’t say the same about Twitter.

Robert Scoble has championed this technique for quite some time and is getting a lot of ridicule from his massive Twitter follower list. I believe he has a valid point. Your data is lost on Twitter, it isn’t on FriendFeed. It’s that simple.

What do you think? Comment here or on FriendFeed and it’ll all show up

Guest Host On TPN Weekly Episode 3

Bwana — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:13:43 +0000

This week, I’m the guest host on the brand new podcast from the Techpodcast network called TPN Weekly. If you’re into podcasts, you really should subscribe to our show over there. We’ll be sampling new hosts every week so you can get a new flavor. I think it’s an awesome idea because you’ll get fresh content from a fresh host.

On this week’s show, I do a “social media special“. I talk for 25 minutes about Twitter, Facebook, Rejaw and FriendFeed. Here’s a video of my live taping from Saturday:

Also, here is the information for the Podcast if you wish to listen via audio (and subscribe):

I’ll update you all via Twitter when I’ll be hosting again. Enjoy!

Doing The TWiT, Baby

Bwana — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:26:37 +0000

So Leo Laporte, internet superstar and ruler of podcasting, contacted me a couple of weeks ago to appear on This Week In Tech (TWiT) as a guest host. After I picked up my jaw and changed my underwear (in that order), I happily accepted and we completed the show last night (listen here). At first I was a bit intimidated with the guest panel most of which have had huge exposure though the likes of TechTV and most recently Revision3, but I did my best to hold my own with such a large panel. Leo thinks the show went well and extended the invitation for future shows, so that’s a good thing

For those of you who don’t know much about TWiT, it recently won the Podcast Award for Best Podcast in the Technology and Science category. Leo Laporte produces a multitude of shows under the TWiT branding that deal with all kinds of interesting topics. For more information, go to http://twit.tv.

Leo has done an excellent job of taking the home grown podcast/video cast hobby and made it professional. If you view his live stream on live.twit.tv, it’s hard to tell that the setup isn’t in a television studio. Leo uses a tricaster to perform many professional effects using an insane setup that I can only hope to dream about for Bwana.TV.

I’m glad to have experienced this colossal event with the new media juggernauts and am already seeing the benefits of such high exposure. My web server has been taking a pounding since it was plugged on the show and also my Twitter follower count has increased by almost 200 in less than 24 hours. Insane!

Thanks Leo and everyone at TWiT for such a wonderful experience and I look forward to future shows.

I also want to thank Chris Pirillo for helping me through his wide, wide network of listeners. I occasionally produce videos for his podcast, the Chris Pirillo Show. I don’t know if Chris contacted Leo, but if he did, I’m even more grateful. Now, I need to get off my lazy posterior and produce more episodes of Bwana.TV and Bwana.org Radio. Look for new videos tonight on Bwana.TV and a new Bwana.org Radio tomorrow (11/11) at 8:30PM EST. Both will be streamed live as I produce them at live.bwana.tv.

Doing the TWiT, baby.