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Yahoo Changes Appearance and Features

I opened my Yahoo! Mail page this evening to check my email and noticed there's a whole new version of interface. Like everyone else they're providing the opportunity to do more "social" stuff like updating a status. The general appearance and layout has been cleaned up and sharpened a bit too.

new-yahoo-interface

I'm still working on some in-depth feature improvements. Texting isn't new, unless I can get it to really work this time then that would be an improvement. The discussion about what's new with social networking stuff included a twitter icon and YouTube, but still working on what's involved in that change.

A WordPress application is new. Being able to publish to a WordPress blog could be interesting. Tried to install the app though and there was some kind of error. Will try that again later.

Some other cool applications related to images are abundant: flickr, Photobucket, MyPhotos and even Picnik for editing all of those images. The list of applications starts to remind me of the early days of Facebook.

Still can't figure out why they're showing the twitter icon. Let me know if you figure it out.

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Social Media Is NOT The Answer

social-media-icons

There’s been a thread of thought bouncing back and forth in my head lately. It stems from some conversations with a few different people as well as hearing the response from other individuals as they speak of and refer to a variety of social media platforms.

Many of my friends are aware that I’m active on Facebook, flickr, blogging, StumbleUpon, twitter, BrightKite, YouTube, Vimeo and a variety of other social sites. Many of those same friends don’t "get" some of them, while others they can see the value.

Most of the time people don’t get twitter. They think it’s only about updating everyone on the fact you’re waking up, eating a meal or going back to bed. If you’ve been using twitter for very long, you probably know it’s useful for so much more than that. I’ve already written about how it’s been useful for me (although I can’t seem to find the link to that post now).

Here’s the deal though, if you’re the type of person that’s not really interested in having a conversation with someone offline (aka the "real" world), then communicating with people via social media isn’t going to make much sense to you either. Even if you understand the potential, if it’s not your personality, I doubt you’re going to be active. For that reason alone, Social Media will NOT be the answer you’re probably looking for in business or even your own personal endeavors.

Don’t waste your time and ours by setting up accounts that will grow dusty with unuse and being ignored.

Similarly anyone can setup a blog, but not everyone will have the discipline to be a writer and keep that blog updated. It’s really no fault of your own, you’re just not interested in writing and you’re not interested in your voice being heard. I believe you can show someone how to write and what to write, but you can’t make them a writer.

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Jason and the Bienstock

A couple of weeks ago now I had the opportunity to help someone in a situation that they felt was there may have been no real solution for in the end. They had exhausted their options and had followed the path to a solution that was the one just about everyone would have taken. They did everything they could to resolve the issue, and weren’t getting anywhere.

A friend of mine, Howard Bienstock, had his twitter account hijacked by spammers and they were using it and taking advantage of his significant list of followers. As of right now, Howard has just over 24,000 twitter followers and they were all getting useless, false and annoying twitter updates from this spammer. They had already setup a new twitter account thinking they would never regain control over their original.

Howard founded OneDegreeConnected.com and is an ultimate business networking machine! Howard’s goose laying the golden eggs is his network and the integrity of his name and that same network. These spammers were getting ready to roast that bird and serve it with SPAM for dinner.

What did I really do to help Howard in this situation?

I don’t have any real special powers. I’m not some amazing security analyst who knows how to work around security problems. I don’t know how to hack into someone’s twitter account and gain back control of everything. So what did I really do?

I took the time to be as helpful as I could and tried to capitalize on my own network to see if I could get anywhere.

I knew the key was to try and get in touch with someone that worked at twitter directly. The problem was that all the standard operating procedures for resolving an issue like this with twitter results in automated steps being performed via email. The spammers had hijacked the account and changed the email address associated with the account. Any validation efforts were going to the spammers for approval, which they would ignore or immediately reject.

I sent out a few tweets of my own to see if anyone in my network might know someone. A couple of people responded. One I expected and one I didn’t. In the end, it was the connection from the person I didn’t expect that go the solution worked out. It worked out quickly at that, within about 5 hours from start to finish from my time getting involved and trying to help.

What did I really do? What did it take to fix the situation?

All I had to do was show an interest in the problem and make the initial contact and ask how I could help. Sometimes being helpful just means just being willing to do what you can and get out of the way. You don’t have to be an expert in something and you don’t have to claim any special amount of "magic" or mystery in getting the problem fixed.

Note: Don’t use a simple password to setup an account thinking you’ll change it later. Use strong passwords. Oh, and don’t write them on Post-It notes and stick them on your monitor.