I ran into this problem today when I decided to switch my twitter name from @jotoole4 to @JaredOToole. Now it doesn’t seem like a big deal but it is.

Here are my reasons for changing:

1. If it’s your name its much more likely someone will remember it if you tell them in person.

2. Think about your biggest points of contact online. Mine are Facebook, my blog, my company. All of those contact points use my full name. My favorite social tool online is twitter so why should it be different.

3. I have a lot of accounts like stumbleupon, digg, technorati that I can’t change from jotoole4. But those aren’t my biggest points of contact, they are more for fun so it won’t hurt me in the end.

4. I watch a lot of ustream shows now to connect with people in the chats. Again I use my full name when I tell people who I am.

5. Social networking is becoming more and more personal. I don’t use a user-name when I introduce myself to someone in person so why should I use one online when I am trying to form relationships.

Now not everyone’s name will be available on all of these sites. For example my buddy Matt Wilson’s name was taken on twitter already so he made his name @MattWilsonTV.

It won’t destroy your efforts if you can’t use just your full name but get as close as you can.

Remember these user-names will be on these sites forever. Think about where you will be in 5years. What would you want your name to be then?

Now if you have already started using different names like I have it makes things a little tricky but you can do damage control. Twitter lets you change your name easily, just announce it when you do. Otherwise focus on your biggest points of contact and if you make the switch try to alert everyone.

Remember this is your personal brand you are creating.

Check out the two articles that got me into Twitter

Twitter for Business

How to Join the Best Twitter Conversations

There’s 2 main things I have begun to explore after these articles that I am finding interesting.

Twellow – This Twitter App allows you to search for people by name and by category. So you can find people in a related field say entrepreneurship, vegetarian, mothers and so on.  It matches keywords from your bio that you provide on Twitter, at times it is a little off so I suggest seeing what it has you categorized as and then maybe tweaking your bio.

Twitter Search – This allows you to search all conversations happening on Twitter.  Simply type in a keyword or words such as “Dell”, “small business” “Miami” and you will see all the tweets involving those keywords. This is a great way to find and answer peoples questions by replying to something they said. This will many times lead to them following you! I am beginning to use it to search for conversations about social networks i am in such as Triiibes and StartupBiz, both on Ning. I can then find other Twitter users on those networks and begin to network with them.

So if you’ve blown off Twitter I would suggest given it another look because even though it can be cluttered with garbage at times if you use the right tools I think you can find it useful.

Anyone else know of useful Twitter Apps???

Follow me on Twitter – My Profile

I think this shows the huge flaw in the Digg System.  This list shows the “powerusers” on Digg and its these people that can manipulate just about any story and get it to the front page of Digg.  As I’ve used Digg I’ve realized this more and more and find it near impossible to make much of an impact unless you are or are near being one of these users.

I also have become discouraged from Digg because the other day I received 18 Diggs on a post I submitted from this blog.  However when I looked at my stats I had received no clicks from Digg.  Obviously everyone of those 18 Diggs came from people just responding to my shout by Digging my story so I would be more likely to Digg the next shout they send my way.

I’m guilty of this action of digging but not clicking but that’s the problem.  Everyone who isn’t a top user is just in a mad race to have more influence on the site so they do everything they can to beef up their stats.

I still like seeing some of the news that Digg has to offer but as far as using it as an effective distribution system for stories I like or that I write I’ve just about given up.

Sites such as Sphinn and Stumbleupon seem to be much more effective and useful.  I’m also just starting to use MIxx which to this point I’m pleased with.

If you really want to make an impact in the social media world you have to find a very niche site that your work would be appropriate for.

Think Yahoo Answers meets Twitter.

What you do is send a question by tweeting @toask and then the question appears on the main page.  This then allows anyone looking at the page to answer your question.

When looking at the homepage it doesn’t seem as though many questions have many or at times any answers to them at all.  However this is a very new app. and I think that will change as more people become aware of this.

It lacks a few desirable features such as tweeting you back when your question gets an answer.  But it is still an interesting service and I’m wondering where it will go and what other similar services start to pop up.

Check out ToAnswer

Follow me on Twitter

If you don’t know, Plurk is another social media tool.  Its similar to Twitter although I find it easier to have conversations on and just find it more interesting overall.

If you use Plurk you know that one of the features/challenges is raising your karma.  It doesn’t take much to increase your karma, just regularly using the service increases a users karma.

However it also doesn’t take much to decrease a users karma.  Plurk states how having a friend request rejected will lower karma, good to prevent mass friending.  But you also lose karma if you just don’t use the service for a day.

What happens when you go on vacation? Are just to busy for a couple days?

Seems a little extreme that you will consistently lose karma just by going on vacation and not being around a computer or wanting to sign into your Plurk account.  They need a better system that will allow users to stray from their account for a few days without suffering a severe penalty.  Something as simple as decreasing karma every 5th day when a user is inactive, instead of every time karma is updated.

I don’t know the perfect solution but something should be changed.

Check me out on Plurk

So, I’m hanging out with William Shatner at the Jet Blue terminal on Friday…

Well, actually, I am watching him in a mildly-creepy voyeuristic kind of way as he saunters up to check in for his flight to Burbank.

My first thought is, “damn, his piece looks good.”

I’m losing my hair fast, so I am seriously tempted to ask where he bought his, but, then I remember…this is NY, we don’t do stuff like that. We’re just that cool.

But, I have to tell someone about my sighting, so I figure I’ll tweet about it. I crack open my mac, pop open Firefox, see Jet Blue’s free wi-fi terms of service page pop up, click on the button that says agree, then start to browse.

I then tweet…

JetBlue terminal. William Shatner waiting in pinstripe suite and shades to board flight to Burbank. Why’s he flying JetBlue? Free, maybe?

A few minutes later, I realize I can get a much better signal with my broadband card, so I make the switch (FYI–not much better), surf a few pages, then check my e-mail to find that…

Jet Blue is now following me on twitter.

What the?! I am instantly freaked out. My mind starts spinning. “Was there something in that terms of service page that let them track my browsing, follow me to twitter, then publicly seek to follow me on twitter?”

I’m over James T. William Denny Kirk Crane Shatner actor dude in a blink as I jump back on twitter to report,

Using JetBlue wifi to access twitter, 10 seconds later, I get a follow request from JetBlue on twitter. Half freaked out, half awed.

I think this is the end of it and vow never to use Jet Blue’s free wi-fi.

But, some 20-minutes later, the saga moves to the next phase

See what happens at Jonathanfields

The sites pretty cool it shows the top 100 Digg users. It sorts users out by how many submits they have had go “popular”.

Basically it shows everyone how far they are from really having an influence on Digg.

In case you were wondering about #16’s stand-out popular ratio of 97%.  He’s Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, so no surprise there.

Definition of a Knol: A unit of knowledge

Google Knol is a project that Google announced awhile ago however it just launched this past week.  It is a place to submit content about any topic which is what brings about the comparisons to Wikipedia.  The basis is that if you consider yourself knowledgeable on a topic you can start a Knol about it, similar to Wikipedia.  Could be a great place to show off your expertise in an area as it grows.  However it has a few defining features.

1. Pages are written by a specific author and that author can choose to have his name verified by Google.  The name verification is optional but adds a great deal of credibility to posts.  The verification is done via phone or credit card. The author can also create a profile about himself and when you sign-up the system automatically starts a Knol for yourself.  See mine Jared O’Toole

2. The pages can be edited by the community but its up to the author how.  As an author you have 3 choices.

• Don’t allow any modifications
• Allow people to submit modifications that the author must approve before publishing them
• Allow full modifications: Wikipedia style

3. A big question out there is how will Google Search treat these pages.  They are Google pages after all. So will they get some special treatment from the system.  One interesting thing I came across was the idea that Google made this because they want a Knol to be the 1st search result for any search made.  So if you search Wikipedia the 1st result will be a Knol about Wikipedia.  Same for every other topic out there.

Right now the project is still in the early stages but I say it’s the perfect time to get out there and write a Knol about something.  There’s not a ton of stuff there yet so you have a chance to get your pages noticed.

Sign up and write your Knol

Get some more tips from the Google team on the How-To’s of Knol writing – Introduction to Knol

- this is the process of clicking the stumble button on your toolbar and coming across articles.  When you come across a page this way and thumb it up or down your vote is given more weight because you came across the site randomly and therefore voted based on content you had never seen before.

Tip – this is the best way to drive traffic to your site however its hard to control who comes across your site.  Key is to build a core group of friends, people who are truly interested in what your doing.  Then when your site is in the system theres a higher chance that your friends will come across it and therefore thumb it up because they like the same stuff.

2. Send To

- this is a handy toolbar function that allows you to easily send a site to any of your friends.  However it may cause a decrease in the weight of a thumbs up if you received the site via the “send to” button.  This makes sense because it tries to eliminate the ability to mass send a particular site and abuse the system if you happen to have a ton of friends.

Tip – it takes more time and is not as convenient but if you want to get your site out there use the message function on your stumble homepage and directly message each of your friends asking them to look at the site.  Maybe even ask them to find the site via Google to help your search engine status out as well.  If you’ve developed a core group of friends with similar interests you should get a decent response from most of them and hopefully a handful of reviews and thumb-ups.  I think this method works best for launching a new site or if you just have an amazing post, not something to do everyday.

3. Your Domain

- Don’t submit the same domain over and over again as your thumbs up will have less weight over time. Example – submitting every blog post you make.  Also this helps to limit the ability for good friends on the site to continuously stumble each others work.

Tip – Try and submit only your best work, the stuff you think will generate a bunch of thumb-ups.  Also if you are just starting a blog, DO submit all of your work.  Point being your work probably isn’t going to be seen at all if you don’t submit it.  Even if your decreasing your stumble weight by doing so hopefully you’ll attract a handful of readers to your blog and over time you can slowly decrease how much work you submit.  Goal being you don’t submit anything but your readers end up submitting all your work.  I’ve done this and even as my submissions for my own blog lost value they were still generating 100-150 views from stumble, not so shabby.

I must stress that none of this is proven but from my experience with stumbleupon these are the biggest trends that I have noticed and I think they are true to some extent.

Also remember to just use the site all the time.  The more you give back to the community the more it will give to you.