Optimistic Rebel

One of the things I love about twitter is if you have a question and have built a robust network of knowledgable friends, all you need to do is ask. As an example, I meeting with my team to discuss the fundemental question of “how do you find relevent blogs to read?” I asked my [...]

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Interesting note from Peter Shankman in today’s Help A Reporter:
A quick note - Yesterday, two members were banned for adding reporters to email lists to promote their products without being asked. Here’s my question - Seeing how HARO is built entirely on trust and the concept of a “family,” (as opposed to the other service [...]

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Last week, when I was stuck re: what to post about, I got several great suggestions, including this one from Robert H. While I think the content from the WSJ, frankly I spent more time in the comments. What I found to be most interesting was how it was rewritten from the orignal article. Personally, [...]

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So apparently for me, part of the Optimistic Rebel blog is exploring the contradiction in things—as in how can one be optimistic and rebellious at the same time. So this post by Jeff Pulver on e-mail Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in a Web 2.0 World caught my eye.
While I totally agree with his suggestions, I’m [...]

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Picked this link up from Twitter/MattDickman, how pulled it via his feeds from ReadWriteWeb.com who post about a new study that reveals gender and age data on social networks. I’m describing that to illustrate how news spreads on the web. Who knows where it’ll end up from this post?
On most of the main social networks [...]

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17 different ways!
Visualize the Twitter Universe | FlowingData

SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Visualize Twitter Social Networks”, url: “http://www.optimisticrebel.com/visualize-twitter-social-networks” });

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Apparently, Boomers don’t want to blog, be part of social networks, play games online, or listen to podcasts. The reasons:

47 % cited concerns over privacy and having personal information on the web
39 % said they are too busy
32% said they do not see the benefit of spending time social networking

I’m from Generation X, what I [...]

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Are you on The Book? LinkedIn? Both? Neither? (I’m on both but probably use the book more often). Max Freiert compares the two:
The most profound difference between Linkedin and Facebook lies in their focus on professional and personal networking (respectively). Looking at the overlap between the two networks, it appears that many people are either [...]

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Wouldn’t it be great if everyone could generate this sort of map to see who’s in their second circle (friend of a friend)? Valdis writes:
This is a social network map of the people I follow on Twitter. They cluster into three emergent clusters — each with a different color node. The arrows show who follows [...]

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Optimistic Rebels like you and I are early adopters. We enjoy kicking the tires on new sites and seeing if they have features missing from Facebook or LinkedIn. We also check to see if our friends have gotten there before us. Here’s some practical advice on not being like Marcia on the Brady Bunch with [...]

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