I first understood the need to get twitter updated quickly when I noticed that others were beating me to the punch on stories that I was posting at work. Allowing others to tell your story negates your influence in the community. When it comes to your story, you want people coming to you, so you can influence and control the conversation. People and companies were taking an RSS feed from Bizwire and posting to twitter with “twitterfeed” faster than I could, manually.

With a twitterfeed account, you can add RSS feeds that update twitter and other destinations, automatically. So I set up an account and gave it a go. I noticed that the initial story I posted took a while to get to twitter, and never made it to facebook. Additionally, couldn’t find a way to get twitterfeed to differentiate my fan page from my profile on facebook. I don’t want design related material getting posted on my facebook profile, I want it to go to my fan page. In my attempt to check the documentation and look around for answers I found “dlvr.it” and procured an invite. Once my invite was accepted via email, I configured my account –  and this post will be the test round. Once I click publish on this post, it should update both twitter and facebook, immediately.

If you have a website with an RSS feed or a blog with a feed and you’d like to have your news, press releaces, blog posts, or any content connected to an RSS feed pushed to twitter and/or facebook, dlvr.it may be for you. I’m hoping it’ll work for me. If you’re one of my clients, followers, or fans that either follows me on twitter, is a fan on facebook, or subscribes to my blog via email, once I publish this, you’ll get this post and you’ll know how to update twitter and facebook automatically from your feed.

CoTweet
CoTweet provides very handy and easy to use tweet scheduler. You will be able to schedule tweets for any date and time without any limits.

co-tweet

After much testing, following the September launch of m.tampaelectric.com, Tampa Electric’s new mobile Web site, I felt it was high-time I posted the accomplishment here. The design, production and launch of this mobile site has been a year-long goal for me and I finally carved out the time in the schedule to meet this goal. Tampa Electric, a fairly conservative company, is usually a wait-and-see type culture as opposed to a “lets be the first and lead” when it comes to communication. However, this seemed to be an easy sell — from my boss, all the way through the executive board, everyone agreed that this was a great idea. Lucky for me as this was tied to my performance review goals and rating.

NickFranceDesign.com has a mobile web site as well. A different URL is not needed to access it as it utilizes a WordPress plugin called WordPress Mobile Edition. If you browse to this site on your mobile, you will be served the mobile edition by default. If you want to browse the full site, just scroll to the bottom of any page and click “Exit Mobile Edition.”

Has anyone ever told you that social media is a fad? Have you ever tried to explain its significance, or the tremendous opportunities that social media presents for a company, or service, or product, only to be put off out of fear and uncertainty?

This video summarizes social media with statistics and trends. It’s creatively produced and shows various social media platforms and how they are being used.

When designing or re-designing your website, it’s not enough to know the numbers on browser usage across the internet, for all sites total. You should study your own numbers. Using your web analytics software, study the browser of choice for your site, from your audience, not the internet at large. Your audience will will tell you a lot, if you pay attention to the numbers. Don’t guess — know for sure how many are viewing your site in Firefox and Safari, as opposed to Internet Explorer or Opera.

From the chart shown below, we see that although IE may have a larger market share, overall, that’s not the case for 37signals.com. This may be true for your site as well. Different industries attract different audiences with diverse demographics. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world out there, so don’t assume that as the internet goes, so goes my website. Use your numbers, but to use them you must first know them. If you’re not using web analytics software, like Google Analytics, or FeedBurner, get started as soon as possible. Stop guessing, know your numbers.

I’ve compiled a list of some of the best social media websites for music lovers. Connect with other people, create lists, upload and download music, videos, and more, all with people with shared interests. So here they are, in no particular order:

	imeem is a social network that enables users to discover, interact and express themselves with media, including music, video and photos, based on shared tastes and interests.
	Last.fm is a music service that learns what you love…  It can connect you to other people who like what you like – and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too.
	SoundClick is a free music community featuring signed and unsigned bands plus state of the art social media tools. It has free member profile pages, mp3 downloads, streaming audio and video, music charts, custom radio stations and more.
	A slick, all-inclusive music site, MP3.com is fueled by an active community of musicians and fans who live to spread the word about music. The site caters to artists looking to promote their material and connect with listeners.
	Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses. Share your music, download your favorite artists!
	The World’s Greatest Collection of Vintage Concert Recordings. There’s only one place you can hear Bill Graham introduce the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Steve Miller ask for more PA volume at Winterland, or Robert Plant kill time with the Fillmore audience while Jimmy Page re-tunes in the background.
	Watch the video. You’ll get it. As an artist, your first step is to upload your music or video and decide which channel competition to enter. Then, fans judge the work side by side with the work of others.
	Artist profiles, loads of widgets giving you the ability to integrate your ReverbNation into Facebook, Bebo and more.
	PureVolume is a website for the discovery and promotion of new music and emerging artists. Each artist has a profile that typically contains basic info, updates, photos, shows and music for streaming.
	Do you love music? Get personalized concert alerts from your favorite artists in iTunes. Share playlists and recommendations with friends. Join over 50 million music lovers across Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, hi5, and iGoogle.

Now share this post with a friend and share some music.

Following last year’s first version of the  Social Media Landscape, This is a new version to sync with the market’s latest evolutions.

This new landscape is now spitted into four main usages (expressing, sharing, networking, playing) and is structured around social platforms which ambition is to cover each user’s needs.

The large size version is here : Social Media Landscape (redux).

Four Main Usages

The various tools and services displayed on this landscape are listed bellow.

1. Expressing tools allow users to express themselves, discuss and aggregate their social life:

• Publication tools like blogs (Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress), wikis (Wikipedia, Wetpaint, Wikia), microblogs (Twitter, Tumblr, Identica), citizen news (Digg, Newsvine, AgoraVox) and livecast (JustinTV, Ustream, BlogTV);
• Discussion tools like forums (phpBB, Phorum) and video forum (Seesmic), instant messengers (Y! Messenger, Live Messenger, Meebo, eBuddy), comments services (IntenseDebate, Cocomment, Disqus, BackType) and 3D chats (IMVU, Habbo, WeeWorld, vSide) ;
• Aggregation tools (FriendFeed, SocialThing, LifeSteam, Profilactic, Plurk…).

2. Sharing tools allow users to publish and share content:

• Content sharing for videos (YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo), pictures (FlickR, SmugMug, Picasa, Fotolog), music and playlists (Last.fm, iLike, Deezer), links (Delicious, Magnolia, Reddit) and documents (Slideshare, Scrib, Slideo) ;
• Product sharing with recommendations platforms (Crowdstorm, ThisNext, StyleHive), collaborative feedback platforms (FeedBack 2.0, UserVoice, GetSatisfaction) or swaping platforms (LibraryThing, Shelfari, SwapTree) ;
• Place sharing with tools based on local adresses (BrighKite, Loopt, Whrrl, Moximity), on events (Upcoming, Zvents, EventFul, Socializr) and on trips (TripWolf, TripSay, Driftr, Dopplr).

3. Networking tools allow users to search, connect and interact with each other’s:

• Search networks allowing users to find ex-classmates (Classmates, MyYearBook, Alumni) or persons (MyLife) ;
• Niche networks (Boompa, Dogster, PatientsLikeMe, Footbo) ;
• B2B networks (LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Viadeo) ;
• Mobile networks (Groovr, MocoSpace, ItsMy, Zannel) ;
• Tools to build an online network (Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, CollectiveX).

4. Playing services that now integrate strong social features:

• Casual games portals (Pogo, Cafe, Doof, Kongregate, PlayFirst, PopCap, BigFish, Prizee) ;
• Social games portals (Zynga, SGN, ThreeRings, PlayFish, CasualCafe, ChallengeGames) ;
• MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, EVE Online, Lineage, Dofus, Runescape) ;
• MMOs (Drift City, Kart Rider, Maple Story, Audition, Combat Arms, Quake Live) ;
• Casual MMOs (Puzzle Pirates, Club Penguin, Neopets, Gaia Online, SmallWorlds, OurWorld).

From Social Networks to social Platform

We can split social platforms into two groups: The First Generation which have been existing since more then 5 years and gather between 50 and 200 millions of users (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Windows Live…) and The New Wave of social players which have a similar offering and a fast growing audience (between 20 and 50 millions users – Netlog, Imeem, Piczo, Lexode, Hyves, Buzznet, Xanga, Zorpia…).

Google and Yahoo! are still absent from the social scene (wait, maybe not…)

You will also notice in this landscape the discretion of Google and Yahoo! which are ‘only’ represented by services that did not managed to break through the social scene (while being strong references, Blogger, YouTube, FlickR cannot be considered has dominant social platforms). Let’s be honest: MySpace and Facebook decently steal the spotlight from Google and Yahoo!.

Wait… maybe not if you consider Google as a being in a much more favorable situation with lower-level services like Gmail (one needs an email to register Facebook, right?) or Google Maps (can you count the number of social services relying on Google mapping tool?). Add to this there current cash situation and it leaves them plenty of time to sharpen their social strategy (Maybe by buying Twitter or FriendFeed, or booth!).

The same is true for Yahoo! which can rely on a massive user base (still outnumbering Facebook’s one) and essential social bricks like Delicious, Yahoo! Pipes, MyBlogLog and the promising Fire Eagle.

A very thought battle around authentication services (Facebook Connect, Google Accounts…) allowing social platforms to exist outside of their boundaries and to export their members’ social graph. Big players like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have to emphasis their legitimacy as historical web players to keep control over their users.

Pay attention to those different services (yes, there is a life outside Facebook)!

I decided to launch the new site today, not because it’s finished and to the point I’d like it to be, but because I realized it will never be done and rightfully so. It will always be evolving and growing. I felt it was at the point in time to get it out there and have you, the user, reader, potential client be apart of the continual process. The portfolio will evolve to be more of a case study than simply a portfolio because behind every project there are business needs that need to be accomplished. As a freelancer, as opposed to simply a designer, it’s my job to come away from a project having helped the client to achieve this.

I will continue to place an emphasis on social media and a Content Management System (CMS) for my clients, going forward. There’s so much happening right now and we’ve only scratched the surface. So keep an eye out for changes and growth here at nickfrancedesign.com, you can follow me on twitter, if you like.